Where the Sage Meets the Sky: Great Basin Landscapes
Welcome to the exhibit about Great Basin landscapes
Where the Sage Meets the Sky: Great Basin Landscapes explores the perceptions by people throughout history who have traveled to and across Nevada, struck by its extremes and its beauty. Some have had a negative reaction to its barren landscape while others have been struck by that very isolation, and embraced it. Many have stayed and surveyed the land and attempted to harness its mineral, water, and other resources. Residents and visitors alike have tried to capture its nature through art, photography, films and writing. Through this exhibit the viewer can gain an understanding of what others have seen in the Great Basin landscapes throughout its documented history. We have pulled together a number of different items from Special Collections which deal with various aspects of the Great Basin, including books, manuscript materials, maps and photographs, most never before exhibited.
Where the Sage Meets the Sky is located in the exhibit area of the Special Collections Department on the third floor of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. The free exhibit is open to the public Monday through Friday (except for major holidays) from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. If you have questions, please call: 775/682-5665.
Sagebrush Conversations
To enhance your enjoyment of Where the Sage Meets the Sky: Great Basin Landscapes, a series of free"Sagebrush Conversations" will be available in February and March 2012. Below is the schedule for each of the talks. All talks take place in the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center's Faculty and Graduate Reading Room located on the 4th floor. Complimentary parking is available directly across from the Knowledge Center in the Brian Whalen Parking Garage.
Planning to attend? RSVPs are preferred due to limited seating. Please call (775) 682-5665 or email Jacque Sundstrand (jsund@unr.edu). Thank you!
The exhibit, Where the Sage Meets the Sky: Great Basin Landscapes, will be open before and after each "Sagebrush Conversations" event.
Sunday, February 26, 2012 - 3:00 p.m.
"Mapping the Great Basin"
Linda Newman, UNR Geoscience & Map Librarian Emerita
Centered on the development of UNR's "Nevada in Maps" digital web presentation, Linda will speak on the history of Nevada in maps, noting the state's development as depicted on maps and emphasizing various map types, including state lands plats and Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.
Linda Newman recently retired as a librarian with a professional career spanning 40 years, working mainly at the University of Nevada, Reno, with earlier experience in public and state libraries. During the last 28 years at UNR she served as the Map and Geoscience Librarian in the DeLaMare Library. Over the decades Newman has served on many library, university and professional boards, committees and councils, including as President of the Western Association of Map Libraries, which covers the western U.S. and western Canada, as well as Chair of the national Cartographic Users Advisory Council in Washington, DC.
Newman currently serves as Chair of the Nevada State Board on Geographic Names. She has authored numerous articles, chapters and several publications published by the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and other professional and commercial publishers.
"Searching the Big Empty"
William L. Fox, Director, Center of Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art
Bill will discuss his book Black Rock Desert, his work on the KNPB production "The Big Empty" and other productions set in Nevada's desert, as well as his latest efforts concerning landscapes at the Center for Art + Environment.
William L. Fox, Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, has variously been called an art critic, science writer, and cultural geographer. He has published thirteen books on cognition and landscape, numerous essays in art monographs, magazines and journals, and fifteen collections of poetry. Among his nonfiction titles are Aereality: On the World from Above; Terra Antarctic: Looking Into the Emptiest Continent; In the Desert of Desire: Las Vegas and the Culture of Spectacle; and The Void, the Grid, and the Sign: Traversing the Great Basin. Fox is also an artist who has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in eight countries since 1974.
Fox has researched and written books set in the extreme environments of the Antarctic, the Arctic, Chile, Nepal, and other locations. He is a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club and he is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Science Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Clark Art Institute, the Australian National University, and National Museum of Australia.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - 7:00 p.m.
"Collecting Testimonials About Wild Nevada"
Scott Slovic, Director, UNR Core Writing Program, English Dept.,
and Roberta Moore, Ranger (retired), Great Basin National Park
Roberta and Scott will tell some of the stories behind the stories compiled in their 2005 book Wild Nevada: Testimonies on Behalf of the Desert. They will also explain the concept of the "wilderness testimony collection" and offer some examples of how the Great Basin landscape continues to inspire their own writing.
Roberta Moore was born in Hawthorne, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, but she spent much of her youth traversing the High Sierras with her father and learning what her heart knew best, the love of wild places. Carrying this habit into early adulthood, she worked for New Mexico State Parks in public information and as a graphic artist. She recently retired from the National Park Service, after 14 years as an interpretive park ranger at Great Basin National Park. Along with interpretive programs, hikes and interpretative cave walks, Moore also created and developed the park’s Darwin Lambert Artist/Writer-in-Residence program. Moore writes about the landscapes she loves, basin and range, high desert and mountain peaks. As a wilderness advocate, she strives to find ways through her writing and her painting to protect those wild sanctuaries.
Scott Slovic has been a professor of literature and environment in the UNR English Department since 1995. He helped to establish the Graduate Program in Literature and Environment at UNR in 1996. The founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment from 1992 to 1995, he has edited the central journal in ecological literary criticism, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, for the past 17 years. His forthcoming books include Nature and the Environment: Critical Insights, Currents of the Universal Being: Explorations in the Literature of Energy, Numbers and Nerves: Information and Meaning in a World of Data, and a second edition of the textbook Literature and the Environment.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - 7:00 p.m.
"Photographing and Mapping the Black Rock Desert"
Peter Goin, UNR Professor & Chair, Art Dept., and
Paul Starrs, UNR Professor & Chair, Geography Dept.
Peter Goin and Paul Starrs coauthored The Black Rock Desert in 2005, each bringing to the volume their professional strengths. Peter will discuss his photography for the book and Paul will cover the geography of this most historically important northern Nevada desert.
Peter Goin is Foundation Professor of Art at the University of Nevada, Reno. His photographs have been exhibited in more than fifty museum nationally and internationally, and he is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including A Doubtful River.
Paul F. Starrs is professor of geography at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the author of Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West, and over a hundred scholarly articles. He has received UNR's Researcher of the Year award and various teaching commendations.
Sunday, March 11, 2012 - 3:00 p.m.
"Water Politics in Northern Nevada"
Leah Wilds, UNR Professor, Political Science
(Unfortunately, Leah Wilds is unable to join the panel as first advertised. We are pleased to have another excellent speaker.)
"Nevada's Changing Wildlife Habitat"
Sherman Swanson, UNR Professor, Department of Environmental & Resource Sciences
The ecology of the Great Basin has evolved because of climate change and the impacts of human presence. Based on the forthcoming 2012 book Nevada's Changing Wildlife Habitat: An Ecological History, coauthored with George E. Gruell, Sherm will explain some of the the historical transformations in the region's plants and animals due to these impacts as well as the general health of the contemporary environment for wildlife species. He will also outline choices that current users and managers of rangelands face in being good stewards of this harsh but fragile environment and its wildlife.
Sherman R. Swanson is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental And Resource Sciences, within UNR's College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources, where he teaches classes in and co-leads the Rangeland Ecology and Management interdepartmental major. He wears many hats. As a rangeland and riparian scientist, he studies the interrelationships among streams, riparian vegetation, watershed hydrology, land forms, land uses, fire, water quality, and fish and wildlife habitat. He is also a State Range Specialist for Nevada Cooperative Extension, teaching riparian ecology and management, emphasizing the structure needed for dissipating energy, storing water, ameliorating floods and droughts, forming habitats and enhancing water quality. As well, he teaches rangeland ecology and management of vegetation, livestock, weeds, and fire for watershed functions, soil protection, forage production and wildlife habitat, working with groups on collaborating for coordinated management.
"Nevada’s Environmental Legacy"
James W. Hulse, UNR Professor of History Emeritus
Jim Hulse asks a rhetorical question in the preface to his 2009 book Nevada's Environmental Legacy: Progress or Plunder: "Have we Nevadans been snoozing while the exploiters and profiteeers have been taking over our homestead?" During "Sagebrush Conversations," he will offer some recent thoughts on this rhetorical question.
James W. Hulse, a retired UNR professor of history, has been writing about Nevada for about 50 years. Hulse is a native Nevadan, a graduate of UNR and later a 35 year member of the History Department faculty. He divides his scholarly research between European and Nevada history. Some of his recent titles include The Silver State: Nevada's Heritage Reinterpreted, Reinventing the System: Higher Education in Nevada, 1968-2000, coauthored with Leonard E. Goodall and Jackie Allen, and Oases of Culture: a History of Public and Academic Libraries in Nevada.
