The visual and performing arts are in full swing throughout the state.
Making good on its promises to bring more activity and people to Commercial Center, Clark County has just launched a program with UNLV, which will produce cultural events at the East Sahara complex.
UNLV Dean of the College of Fine Arts Nancy Uscher says that Clark County didn't dictate what could and could not be shown during the six events scheduled for this semester.
"The whole process was very collaborative," she says. "There was a lot of freedom to explore. And the commissioners had been so positive and helpful. And so there were really no guard rails; we just wanted to come up with the best ideas. ... We're a very diverse university, we wanted to come up with a really diverse array of events. As we launched this week, we're calling it Arts in the Center."
The next event — a jazz concert — will be held March 20 at the Composers Room at Commercial Center.
Meanwhile, up north, the Nevada Museum of Art, the state’s only major contemporary art museum, has just opened a major exhibit on the painter Maynard Dixon, who produced a huge body of work based on his many visits to Nevada. About 150 of those paintings are now on display at the Museum through July 28.
Dixon was among the first artists to bring a Modernist sensibility to Nevada. But he also influenced how people saw the desert.
"What's interesting about [Dixon's] Nevada work is that it's part of this larger trend in the '20s and '30s where there's more interest in the desert as a kind of tourist destination," says John Ott, art historian and a professor at James Madison University. "And people are finding the kind of beauty and romance of a desert environment, whether it's in the Great Basin or the West more generally. Before this time, it had been really seen as kind of a wasteland place where you were just trying to get through it. Nothing valuable there. And so his work, I think, does a remarkable job of transforming these barren desert escapes into really enticing views and vistas you'd want to visit by horseback or by car."
Guests: John Ott, professor of art history at James Madison University; Nancy Uscher, dean, UNLV College of Fine Arts
