Change of scene

Architect and sculptor Will Bruder stood at the top of a flight of stairs. His jacket was rumpled. His wire-framed glasses perched low on his nose as he watched the swarm of Nevadans climbing to the second floor of the building he designed, the Nevada Museum of Art.

This is the tail end of the creative process. Is the building—an intriguing $16 million ridged black glory on West Liberty—what Bruder had first imagined? Arguably this is the most important work of architecture in Reno. But do people get it?

“You should be very proud,” a woman tells him.

About 3,000 museum members and patrons of the arts in Reno had attended a private opening party on Friday. But another test for the new facility came Saturday, when hundreds of people lined up outside the new museum for a dedication and grand opening.

For weeks, the question, “Have you seen it?” had been asked on ads and bumper stickers all over town.

Finally, we could answer in the affirmative. The crowd was as diverse as the exhibits of art—which features University of Nevada artists alongside such international phenoms as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo—inside the new 60,000 square feet of museum space. I spotted teens and college students. Moms toting toddlers. Seniors pulling oxygen tanks. A guy in a cowboy hat, smelling earthy. Guys in Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts.

The line wrapped along the length of the four-level museum then doubled over through the parking lot and ended practically back at the street. It was hot, but you could buy a soft drink or a Great Basin Icky microbrew from a large concession booth. A dedication was blessedly short. A museum trustee passed out maps. Admission was free.

A much-shorter line was available to museum members. More than 200 memberships were sold.

The opening signified another shift in Reno’s reputation, a tide that began to turn with the annual Artown event and has continued with the promotion of an arts and commerce district along the river in downtown Reno.

Word’s getting out. The new museum building nabs Reno a place in travel guides like “United States of the undisney,” an Internet guide with a bias in favor of modern architecture, pop-culture icons and folk art. (Did you know that there’s a full-size replica of the Simpsons’ home in Henderson, Nev.?)

A story on the new NMA featured in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee enticed Californians.

“The reopening of the Nevada Museum of Art in new quarters four times as large as the old museum on the site signals, in a significant way, a new attitude toward art in this windy, Wild West town,” reported the Bee on Sunday. “The new building, as stunning as the art within its walls, is sure to cause a commotion in a city that loves its neon-shrouded, windowless boxes.”

OK, not sure about that last part. Who really loves “neon-shrouded, windowless boxes"?

Nevertheless, the story worked.

“It made me want to get in my car right then and drive to Reno to see this wonderful new art temple,” said News & Review colleague Robert Speer, a senior editor who’s based in Chico.

Still it may take a minute or two for old-school Mapes worshipers to understand the significance of this new work, which has been compared to a battleship, among other things. No worries. Visitors who wonder about the origins of the building can visit a corner of the third level, where there’s an exhibit dedicated to the architect’s work. The entrance is lined with photos of many Bruder-created places along with lines of philosophical text: “We are intensely interested in the craft of making and the presence of the void where two dissimilar materials meet in space. With this in mind, we weave and assemble materials in familiar and surprising ways to create juxtapositions between the rough and the refined.”

No place better than Reno for this type of experiment.

The exhibit follows Bruder’s idea of “the building as a metaphor for the Nevada landscape” from its origin—a photo of a large fortress-like mountain erupting from the playa in the Black Rock Desert. Next to the photo are a few preliminary sketches that capture the lines of the rock, its sharp ledges and smooth curves. The process evolves into more detailed plans and a three-dimensional scale model of the museum.

Kathleen Durham, one of the museum’s newly trained docents, directed folks through Bruder’s work.

“Once they come in here, they are so charmed,” Durham said. “When people see the photo of the Black Rock, there’s an ‘Aha!’ moment.”

Durham described a similar recent epiphany on the part of Renoites and museum supporters the night before who turned out Friday for the preview party.

“It was the most magic thing I’d ever seen,” Durham said. “There was a band, and everyone was on the roof dancing. I think people felt, ‘This is ours.’ It was the best night I’ve ever had in Reno.”

It’s said that about 10,000 people visited the Nevada Museum of Art Saturday. Like the annual summer goings-on of Artown or the Great Reno Balloon Races, it was something they wouldn’t have missed.

Debbie Short and Burt Carpenter of Reno had been waiting for the museum to open for six months. They brought a couple of adolescent boys (a son and his friend) to the event.

“I thought the kids would like it,” Short said. One boy nodded, distracted perhaps by a Frida Kahlo painting. Kahlo’s 20th-century Mexican artworks were displayed in a large spacious third-floor gallery, alongside works by Diego Rivera. Did I say spacious? I’m sure it was meant to be. But on Saturday, there was barely room to turn around in the gallery, let alone peruse a piece of art. Half a dozen individuals clustered around nearly every painting or object of art.

Carpenter and Short had been looking at Kahlo’s “The Love Embrace of the Universe,” in which personified clouds wrap around what looks like an ancient statue in decay which is holding a Kahlo-like figure who’s embracing a child with an eye on his forehead.

“This is interesting,” Carpenter said. “I think it shows a little bit of all cultures.”

Hands-on art activities in the NMA Learning Center attracted crowds as well. As bevies of children created bright flowers from tissue paper or used wooden tools to engrave on thick pieces of foil, others stood waiting for a turn.

“Parents, you have to stay with your children,” one worker reminded visitors.

In the Nell J. Redfield Discovery Center, Brendan Aguilar of Reno, 10, had become fully engaged in the creation of a building with the plastic Mattel toys.

“What are you making?”

“A sculpture,” he replied without looking up.

“Do you like these … toys?”

“They’re cool,” he said, attaching a thin, wavy strip to his structure.

His mother, Roseann Aguilar, urged him to finish up.

“There’s lots more to see,” she said.

It’s quieter on the roof. Visitors wander around, peeking between tall slats of black. Too bad a docent isn’t hanging around up there to explain that Bruder was going for a “camera shutter effect.” Each view is a snapshot of the museum’s spatial habitat. Click. There’s downtown Reno. Click. There’s the stairway to Deux Gros Nez, a local restaurant that’s already seen business increase with the new museum’s opening.

The roof is exhilarating, if you can suspend the immediate need for comprehension.

Clearly, this is a building we’ll be seeking to understand for years to come.