Tours : Shape of Things to Come: Reno/Tahoe Celebrates the Arts

Never far from the neon main streets, challenging golf courses, and alpine slopes and trails of Reno/Tahoe is an art scene that – over the past ten years – has become one of America’s most colorful evolutions.

What once was a quiet riverside park in downtown Reno is now a nationally-renowned venue for plays, concerts, opera, and theater. At Lake Tahoe’s Shakespeare Festival, audiences are treated to a front row seat of some of the region’s most talented troupes, as well as one of the world’s most treasured views. Galleries thrive alongside casinos. Museums pull in major exhibits and displays that tour the likes of New York, Dallas and Chicago. The scope of entertainment in the Reno-Tahoe area is vibrant and diverse, ranging from intimate coffee shop poetry readings to film festivals to a “Broadway in Reno” series that brings such attractions as Grease, Fosse, South Pacific, and Miss Saigon to the stage in downtown Reno.

Perhaps the one recent development that best displays the area’s position as an art destination is the stunning new Nevada Museum of Art. The museum, which opened in May 2003 with a premiere showing of Diego Rivera and Twentieth Century Mexican Art, is an architectural marvel as well as a centerpiece of the community. Designed by acclaimed architect Will Bruder, the facility includes a 180-seat theater, nearly 13,500 square feet of expanded gallery space, indoor/outdoor dining, a street-level sculpture garden, and a rooftop sculpture garden that hosts concerts, receptions and family activities. The most vivid feature of the museum is its exterior—a 68-foot-tall, 250-foot-long, torqued wall with varying angles. Encasing the wall is a skin of Anthra-Zinc, a black material made of zinc with creases, folds and patterns. It reflects the geologic textures of the Black Rock Desert, a vast playa 100 miles north of Reno, from which Bruder drew his inspiration for the building’s design.

The art scene flourishes throughout the year and expands well beyond Reno. In Carson City, the Brewery Arts Center is a constant resource for theater, readings, music, dance and visual art. Sharing the same historic digs with The Brewery Arts Center is King Street Gallery, with original works of art from the Nevada Artists Association. As Nevada’s capitol, Carson City has more than its fair share of museums, galleries and exhibits, including the capitol itself. Still the center of Nevada politics, this handsome building houses a museum that’s well worth the visit. One of Carson City’s most popular museums is the Nevada State Railroad Museum, which features a variety of steam engines, including some that were once owned by Paramount Studios and which appeared in such movies as The Harvey Girls, The Virginian, and Maverick.

No trip to Carson City is complete without stopping in at the Nevada State Museum. The building itself is a historical gem, an original U.S. Mint which produced almost $50 million in gold and silver coins from 1870 to 1893. Walk the halls of the museum and you’ll encounter displays profiling the area’s native people, its birds, fishes and mammals, its history in mining (including an underground walk-through mine), and the fossilized remains of a 17,000-year-old imperial mammoth uncovered in the Black Rock Desert.

A scenic half hour’s drive from Carson City and Reno is a distinct pocket of culture in one of the least likely places–Virginia City. It was here, in fact, that a roving reporter by the name of Samuel Clemens took on the pen name Mark Twain. Side-by-side with 1860s saloons are first-class galleries. Piper’s Opera House, which during the heyday of the Comstock Lode was one of the west’s leading stages, has been recently restored to its former glamour and once again rings with the sounds of entertainment.

Just five minutes down the hill from Virginia City is the Gold Hill Hotel, another find that will pleasantly take you by surprise. Throughout the year at the Gold Hill Hotel–Nevada’s oldest hotel–you’ll find poetry readings, lectures, and intimate one-act plays that highlight moments from the area’s colorful past.

And then there’s Lake Tahoe, with a centerpiece that’s the envy of every chamber of commerce across the globe. In addition to all the recreational activities and endless scenic vistas that ring the lake, you’ll encounter an art scene that complements Tahoe’s highly-touted reputation. The lake is loosely divided into a “North Shore” and a “South Shore,” each with a distinctively different tone and feel.

South Shore moves to a quick clip, while North Shore and the Tahoe City area have never lost touch with their quaint and more casual pasts. Whichever side of the lake you find yourself on, you’ll never be more than a step or two from a breathtaking view of Lake Tahoe -- and you won’t be far from a gallery or two either.

South Lake Tahoe, Incline Village, Tahoe City, and nearby Truckee are havens for artists, galleries and cultural events. A wintertime rite for locals is Snowfest! Winter Carnival, a tapestry of concerts, art shows, film festivals and cultural events. October is made even more colorful with Squaw Valley’s annual Autumn Food and Wine Festival, blending fine wine, art and the talents of some of America’s finest chefs.

Along Tahoe’s West Shore you’ll pass gallery after gallery, make a stop at the Tahoe Maritime Museum at Sugar Pine Point State Park, and eventually end up at the Tallac Historic Site on the South Shore. Here you’ll find an ongoing series of cultural events held throughout the summer. There’s a Renaissance Festival in June and the summer-long, annual “Valhalla Music & Arts Festival” which includes fine art exhibits, folk craft demonstrations, concerts, classic films and staged plays, as well as a vast range of historic interpretive experiences. Also on the South Shore is The Lake Tahoe Festival of the Arts, a fine art show held during the Fourth of July holiday. The long-running Lake Tahoe Music Festival attracts an eclectic range of first-class performers who bring their talents to scenic stages scattered around the lake.

Perhaps no stage is more well known around the region than that where the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival is held. Nestled into the dunes and pines of a secluded cove at Sand Harbor State Park on Tahoe’s North Shore, this festival consistently draws rave reviews from press across the country not so much for its beauty, but for the caliber of acting that takes to the stage. For the past few years, the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival has been named one of the top 100 events in North America.

Regardless of what side of the lake you’re staying at or where you happen to be at any given moment, the Lake Tahoe basin is a virtual Pandora’s box for those seeking a good concert, an afternoon stroll through a gallery, or a late night poetry reading in an intimate pub or coffee shop. If you find yourself near Tahoe City in late summer, you might want to spend a few hours at the Annual Wood Boat Festival, featuring classic vessels that continue to ply Tahoe’s gin-clear waters. There’s the Tahoe Jazz Festival held around Labor Day, a variety of Christmas crafts fairs, Tahoe ARTour’s open studio tours, Splendor of the Sierra Art Show at Northstar-at-Tahoe, and the Tahoe International Film Festival, to name a few.

Located about 180-degrees from the greens, blues, pine and water of Lake Tahoe is Burning Man, a counter-cultural event held annually around Labor Day on the chalky playa of the Black Rock Desert north of Reno. Often referred to as a contemporary “Woodstock,” the heart of the festival is embedded in art, as it has been since its inception in 1986. A tour of the surrounding playa quickly confirms the eclectic nature of art that takes shape on the desert, ranging from photography displays to sculptures to three-story temples that will eventually succumb to the flames of another Burning Man celebration.

In all the excitement and adventure that’s before you in the Reno-Tahoe area, there’s also the calming and enlightening aspect of treating yourself to a concert in a cottonwood-cathedral park that lines the banks of the Truckee River. Or the opportunity to snuggle into a sand dune for an evening of Bard by the lake. Or indulging in a sandwich/gallery combo at the Nevada Museum of Art. Or…well, you get the idea. Art and culture abound, and they combine to make your trip to Reno-Tahoe an even more colorful experience.