City of Dust: The Evolution of Burning Man

If you start talking about an event that takes place about 100 miles northeast of Reno in the desert in late August, most people in our area, and beyond, will know immediately that you’re talking about Burning Man.  

Burning Man has become a cultural institution worthy of a museum exhibition. “City of Dust: The Evolution of Burning Man” runs from July 1 to January 7 and then in the spring of 2018 it will travel to the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. 

The exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno traces the history of Burning Man from its modest San Francisco origins to a yearly event that attracts tens of thousands of people to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.  

“The genesis of this exhibition really began about four years ago when our Center for Art and Environment, which is the research arm of the museum, acquired a major archive of materials related to the history of Burning Man,” said Ann Wolf,  John C. Deane Family Senior Curator and Deputy Director of the Nevada Museum of Art.  > Read More, Fred Wasser of KNPR  

 

The Founders of Burning Man

The Founders of Burning Man

Source: https://knpr.org/knpr/2017-06/city-dust-ev...

Rare Burning Man Photos, Journals, Artifacts Coming to Nevada Museum of Art →

Walking into the Nevada Museum of Art's newest exhibition is like walking into a Burning Man time capsule. 

A pair of dusty boots. A 1986 sketch of the man. Several jars of ash and melted glass collected from torched effigies over the years. 

City of Dust, open to the public from July 1 through Jan. 7, 2018, is a more than 300-piece collection of Burning Man relics, just a sliver of the more than 6,000 items that the museum has collected for its Burning Man archive at the Center for Art and Environment in Reno. 

After the exhibition's debut in Reno, it will travel to the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in spring 2018.

The exhibition traces the more than three-decade evolution of an event that has morphed from a bohemian beach gathering in San Francisco in 1986 to the modern-day 68,000-person pop-up city in Northern Nevada's Black Rock Desert each year. 

Burning Man celebrated 30 years since its birth last year, and this year's event is on the horizon, planned for Aug. 27 to Sept. 4.  > Read More

Featured Image: Richard Misrach's photograph, Desert Croquet [#3 (Balls/Plane/Car], 1987 (Photo: Collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, Gift of Michael Light)

Event Horizon, A Documentary on Burning Man →

The film explores Burning Man's history, some of the myths and misunderstandings that surround and sensationalize Burning Man's culture, and how the event has come to survive, grow, and evolve by working closely with its neighbors. The film focuses on the challenges and benefits brought to Reno and its sibling communities which serve as the final outposts of civilization to these migrations, and on how Burning Man principles are permanently transforming the local arts and culture.

Read More