Post-War Bohemians in Northern Nevada

University of Nevada Reno

Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center

1664 N. Virginia Street

Reno

The University of Nevada Reno's Knowledge Center presents, Post-War Bohemians in Northern Nevada, an exhibition of work by local artists who experimented with art styles and lifestyles out of Nevada’s mainstream. While many Nevadans were settling into cozy, traditional “apple-pie” American lifestyles after World War II, a tight-knit group of artists were producing colorful, nontraditional art, and living lifestyles that matched. For the first time, the work of this talented group is presented together, at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno through September 16.

Post-War Bohemians in Northern Nevada contains the work by 16 of these artists who often gathered in Virginia City, as well as took classes and encouraged one another at the University of Nevada, Reno campus.

The featured artists include Zoray Andrus, Betty Bliss, Nancy Bowers, Gus Bundy, Robert Cole Caples, Ben Cunningham, Joanne de Longchamps, Robert Hartman, Ruth Hilts, Craig Sheppard, Yolande Sheppard, Louis Siegriest, Adine Stix, Marge Tanner, Richard Guy Walton, and Ed Yates.

University Professor of Art Emeritus Jim McCormick and Christopher Schwartz, an accomplished student intern, co-curated the show and published a 44-page catalog about northern Nevada’s post-war art community. It is the first time that the artists have been featured together in one publication. The catalog is available free at the exhibition.

The exhibition is open to the public through September 16: Monday through Thursday, 7:30am – 8pm; Friday 7:30am – 5pm, Saturday-Sunday 1 – 5pm. Some select pieces are available for viewing only in the Special Collections Department on the Third Floor, 9am – 4pm, Monday through Friday.

For more information, please contact the University of Nevada, Reno Special Collections Department at 775-682-5665 or specoll@unr.edu.

[Photography by Gus Bundy – Reno’s Valerie Gallery, November 1952; painting by Adine Stix; information from UNR press release]