Locals have heard it said so many times: Las Vegas doesn’t have an art museum. But that simply isn’t true. UNLV’s Barrick Museum, for instance, features multiple exhibits at any given time.
And then there’s the Rita Deanin Abbey Museum, located near Centennial Hills.
You heard right — a 10,000-square-foot art museum in the suburbs. All of its 250-plus displayed works come from one of Nevada’s most important artists.
Rita Deanin Abbey came to Las Vegas from New Mexico in 1965. A former UNLV art professor, Abbey poured her love for nature and the American Southwest into her 2,500-plus artworks, which included paintings, drawings, sculptures, and more.
And some — 22, in fact — recently came out of storage for the first time in more than 30 years, the first new exhibits since the Abbey opened in 2022.
Those new exhibits are:
- "Gan Or," an architectural series relating to the artist's home, adjacent to the museum
- "Montenegro," which showcases a type of monotyping. "It's printmaking that involves drawing or painting on smooth, non-absorbent surface," explains the museum's executive director, Laura Sanders. "These works are filled with vibrant colors and energetic shapes, and they just encourage visitor interpretations."
- "Drawings From the Model," which draw, as it were, from what Abbey learned from abstract expression painter Hans Hoffman
- "Albuquerque Revisited," a paper-based sequel to her Alburquerque series from the 1950s that highlight that city's landscape and residential architecture.
"They're just wonderfully explosive and full of life," says Sanders.
Guest: Laura Sanders, executive director, Rita Deanin Abbey Museum
