Nevada News Paper

Nevada News Paper

Nevada News Paper

For decades, Reno has had a statue here and there – in front of the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts, on the University of Nevada-Reno campus. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, however, that the city began to take public art seriously.

The city’s Public Art Program adopted by the Reno City Council in 1992 decreed that the budget for any new city construction or park had to include two percent for public art. Perforated Object 27 by Michael Heizer, which stands in front of the Bruce R. Thompson Federal Building, was one of the first public art works, installed four years after the ordinance was enacted. Since that time, a host of projects funded by the city, art groups, organizations and private citizens have added to a steadily growing number of works in public places

Nevada Museum of Art

When the newest incarnation of the Nevada Museum of Art was built in 2004, sculpture was an important part of its exterior. Outdoor art in the Wilbur D. May Sculpture Plaza at the building’s northwest corner includes Celeste Roberge’s “Cairn,” an exo-skeletal of anodized steel and Truckee River rock, a sit-upon statue spelling out the words “Inhale/Exhale” by New York sculptor Nancy Dwyer, and a larger-than-life bronze horse by Deborah Butterfield, commissioned specifically for the plaza. Other sculptures in the Nightingale Sculpture Gallery punctuate the greenery of the museum’s glass-walled roof garden.