Celebrate art

It happened last weekend in Reno with the unlocking of the doors of the new Nevada Museum of Art. Without a doubt, this is the single-most culturally important building ever constructed in northern Nevada.

In some weird way, Reno owes Will Bruder, the architect who designed the building, a debt of gratitude that will never be repaid. Yes, he presumably got a paycheck for the building’s design, but where are the royalties for the changes in attitude Reno’s visitors will have when they return home to San Francisco, Seattle or Denver? Some of those visitors will leave with the idea that Reno is something more than a cow town with gambling.

Some of those visitors will leave with the idea that Reno appreciates its art, its culture and its architecture—that Reno can build better things than sound walls, bowling stadiums or hotel towers. And when they leave, they are going to take a memory of a place they can’t see at an Indian casino, on the New Jersey shoreline or within a mega-resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

But forget the millions of tourists during the next 50, 60, 70 years who will cross the museum’s rough floors and climb the stairway and see Reno as many citizens of Reno see our town; this building is ours—the people who live and work and raise their families here.

How many Truckee Meadows children in the next century will stand for the first time in awe of masterworks that hang suspended in the warming light of the galleries and maybe understand for the first time that their souls can be expressed in something other than words, violence or artifice?

How many local people will stand on the roof and wonder why the wall is broken to obscure some parts of the landscape while directing the attention to the environment the architect sought to emulate? How many people will wonder at the textures of slate and brushed steel, eye the subtle manipulations of gradations of light, experience the vertigo from the stairway and speculate about the motivations of the architect and grow from the experience?

Can anyone measure the impact of the realization that buildings, art and architecture are the most enduring works of man, so that dividends can be paid to Bruder or museum executive director Steven High or the people who cared enough about art and this community to put $16 million into a building to house and display something as nebulous as “art"?

Probably not. It feels silly to think so, anyway.

Bruder was right about many things but one thing in particular when his design for the new Nevada Museum of Art was chosen to become tangible: This is a building that people will talk about. This is also a building that will house things people will talk about.

And maybe that talk is all the additional recompense Bruder and High and their associates require.