An Inside View of the Barrick Museum

Building a Community

Aurore Giguet, Program Director — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:32:24 +0000

One of the things we’re always thinking about at the Barrick is how to engage the community. By that, I mean how can we connect with visitors, build lasting relationships, and encourage repeat visits. As I’ve written before, I’m a firm believer that museums can no longer simply be providers of content but must serve as community and participatory spaces. Museums should be gathering places; and I’d like to think that, over the last several years, we’ve made the Barrick a more welcoming place. UNLV Students and other visitors now regularly come to the Museum not only to see the exhibitions but to hang out, study, and meet friends. The lounge area is more often than not live with activity, and it is fully stocked with books, games, puzzles, and sketching supplies, giving visitors the opportunity to learn something, create something, and have a positive social experience.

Other recent changes have included: designating a portion of the exhibition space as a community gallery; collaborating with local arts organizations; creating the Barrick Student Association; planning student only events (such as tonight’s Rebel Art Party); soliciting visitor opinions through the comment and Post-it walls (pictured below); and building an extraordinarily supportive online community. All in all I’d say we’ve done a terrific job in starting to build relationships, but there is so much more we can and will be doing.

In the upcoming weeks and months, we’ll be launching a collectors club and concert series; planning fun and unique events and experiences (keep a look out for something on 11-11-11); continuing to work with local art organizations and nonprofits; and lookingthrough hundreds of suggestions left on the Post-it wall to help plan next year’s exhibition schedule.

Our overall goal is to create “good” museum experiences, experiences that are educational, enjoyable, and social. We want visitors to leave feeling inspired and eager to come back. I would love for people to ask themselves, “I wonder what’s going on at the Barrick today.” I know we’re a long way off from where I’d like us to be, but I think we’re on the right path.

The question is, are we connecting with you. Are the things we’re doing helping to create an engaged community? I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to know what you think we’re doing right and doing wrong, and just hear your ideas and thoughts about the Museum. Please comment below or send me an email – aurore.giguet@unlv.edu.

Last Chance to Donate for the “We Will Survive” Exhibition and Benefit Auction

Dustin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:12:03 +0000

There’s only a week left to donate work for the upcoming “We Will Survive” exhibition and silent auction to support the UNLV Barrick Museum. “We Will Survive” is the Barrick’s way of introducing ourselves to the community as an arts institution, by bringing together work by some of Vegas’ most talented and creative artists. To do that, to play our role as a forum for the entire community, we need your help! Painters, photographers, sculptors, video artists, visual artists of every stripe and color, join us in demonstrating that art has a place in the Las Vegas Valley! Your donations are accepted until September 1st, and the show is going up on September 23. Drop us a line at aurore.giguet@unlv.edu or dustin.wax@unlv.edu if you need more information, or give us a call at (702) 895-3381.

The Importance of a University Museum

Aurore Giguet, Program Director — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:00:18 +0000

Museums are vital institutions where education, inspiration, history and creativity are defined and displayed for all to see. They have the power to change the way we see and understand our world, and in the importance of close observation and challenging preconceived notions. For a university campus, a well-developed museum can be a critical player in not only unifying its own campus base but also in building and maintaining strong relationships with its surrounding community, including the public schools, residents and visitors, by giving them access to the type of education resources only a university can offer. This is especially true in the resort-dominated city of Las Vegas, where there are relatively few cultural opportunities available to the general public. Adding to this bleak outlook, the closing of Las Vegas’ sole public art museum means the city has taken a giant step backward in terms of cultural engagement. Yet, both the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Governors Association agree that cultural assets such as museums are essential to attracting businesses, a skilled workforce, and local, regional, and international tourism.

UNLV is often viewed as the Mojave Desert’s intellectual oasis. As such, the University has an obligation to extend its educational and scholarly programs to the Las Vegas community and beyond. A strong university museum – a place of informal learning open to both students and the general public – serves this purpose well, providing a place of enjoyment and education for all segments of the Las Vegas population, surrounding communities and visitors.

New Exhibits at the Barrick and an Upcoming Production

quortney — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:07:50 +0000

If you haven’t gotten a chance to visit the Barrick within the past week, mosey yourself on down to UNLV and check it out! We just put up two fantastic exhibits in both the Main Gallery and Community Gallery of the museum. Lincoln Maynard’s opening for his Urbis Octaptych: The City… the Times, the Promise was just last Friday and we had a pretty great turnout. If you weren’t among the lucky visitors of the opening, dinny fret!! Lincoln’s work will be displayed until September 10th and that gives you plenty of time to check it out. Remember: Admission is free, so that shouldn’t give you any excuses to miss it!

The other exhibit we have came to us from the Nevada Arts Council. It’s titled Great Basin Exteriors: A Photographic Survey. It’s pretty stinking amazing, you guys. Adam Jahiel, Nolan Preece, and Daniel Cheek are the artists involved and by golly, they’re fantastic! The best part of that exhibit is that I helped nail it to the wall. If the photographs are crooked, whoa – that wasn’t me.

We have some pretty exciting news as a museum to share with everyone: Around September (we haven’t quite set the date yet) we will be hosting a production of Red in the Center Gallery of the Exhibition Hall. Red is a play based on the story of Mark Rothko, 20th century Abstract Expressionist painter. The production is set in the artist’s studio with all the dialogue being between Rothko and his assistant. We’re so stoked to be having a production in the gallery!

So keep checking our events in the future for a set date on the Red production! Or come in and sign up for our newsletter to be sent to you via email. Better yet, just come in and check out the Barrick!

Wanna be a Barrick Museum intern?

Dustin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:04:10 +0000

Over the past couple months, the Barrick Museum has made two HUGE changes. The first is that, as of July 1st, we became primarily self-funded. Though we’re still part of UNLV and housed in a UNLV-maintained building, the university no longer pays any of the day-to-day operating costs of the museum. The second is that we’ve shifted our focus to art and culture. In recent years, we’ve had a number of excellent art shows, but until now we haven’t formally embraced art as a core part of our mission. With our funding cut, several local institutions covering the natural history and anthropology that were part of our domain, and no significant local art museum, bringing the arts into our purview on a full-time basis seems like the best way to serve the community and keep ourselves afloat.

This is a gigantic process. On the surface it seems simple enough – just keep doing what we’ve been doing, putting on top-notch shows of work by local artists and modern luminaries like Ansel Adams and Stephen Hendee. But if we’re going to make this shift for real — AND find enough financial support to stay open in the long run — there’s a lot more than that involved. We need to be thinking about creating arts programming, developing our collection, producing educational material, building relationships with other local arts organizations, cultivating new audiences, and on and on.

And there are a TON of other projects we’d like to do, too — things that aren’t necessarily “mission essential” but would certainly be nice, if only we had the staff to spare. Things like developing an audiotour, creating an iPhone or Android application, putting together art classes and workshops for children or adults, organizing artist talks and conferences, creating guides to our collection, and so on.

For this sort of project, then, we have developed an internship program. Interns at the Barrick work on a single project, developing whatever skills they need to fulfill the project’s goals and producing a finished product at the end: a program, an event, a business process that can be followed by museum staff, a written report, or whatever. We can arrange for academic credit for students by working with their departments, but we can also arrange non-credit internships for students and non-students alike.

Unfortunately, we can’t pay interns — the whole “lost our funding” thing — but we can offer a great environment to work in and a chance to play a part in the growth of the museum. Interns work largely independently, but can draw on the knowledge of our staff as well as the resources in our library to develop their project. It’s a great way to develop your resume and your skillset.

If you’d be interested in working on a project at the Barrick, fill out this form and let’s talk!

Moving Forward

Aurore Giguet, Program Director — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:56:51 +0000

Although losing our State funding is truly devastating I find it liberating at the same time – if that makes sense. It’s a time of reflection, a time to focus and engage, a time to reevaluate how we fit into the existing university structure, and a time to think about who are audience is and what type of museum they’d like us to be. It’s like the museum is having a mid-life crisis – it is in its 42nd year of operation.

Over the last several years we’ve started the process of rebranding ourselves; embracing modern times and modern audiences by opening up to the community. I feel we just need to continue on that path. I believe that museums are participatory spaces, not quiet but alive, that visitors make the museum better when they share their ideas and use the space as a social place. I see museums as platforms not just as providers of content. By engaging audiences, improving services and programming, and demonstrating our social significance we will survive as an institution.

One of the first things we’ll be doing is rewriting our mission statement and strategic plan. Time and time again when we’ve asked what type of museum you’d like us to be we get two responses, art and/or cultural history. We too believe that’s where our strength lies, and our mission and programming should reflect that. Our Fall calendar is already filling with exciting exhibits and events; but, as always, I’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts.

New Expanded Hours

Aurore Giguet, Program Director — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:22:18 +0000

We’ve been thinking of doing this for a while and its finally happening. Beginning Friday, July 1 the Museum is adopting new hours of operation. The new hours will extend the Museum’s availability further into the evening and through the weekend.

New visitor hours will be:

Monday: CLOSED
Tuesday: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Wednesday: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Thursday: 10:00 am – 8:00 pm
Friday: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Saturday: 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Sunday: 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

The enhanced hours will allow for more flexibility in scheduling after-hours and weekend events and programs. This positive change is an institutional priority that will enable the Museum to better serve its audience by providing greater access for families, for visitors who work during the day, and for those who wish to visit the Museum on weekday evenings and weekends.

We’d like your input as to what type of self-initiated and planned events you’d like to see at the Museum during these extended hours. Please comment below or send them directly to aurore.giguet@unlv.edu.

An Introduction

Aurore Giguet, Program Director — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:36:13 +0000

Big changes are underway at the Barrick today, so we thought it would be a good time to restructure our blog and give an insiders perspective of whats going on. But first, a little prologue.

The Barrick Museum, along with other cultural institutions around the state, have found ourselves in an extraordinarily difficult situation. State funding for the Museum has been completely eliminated. What does this mean? It doesn’t mean immediate closure but it does mean that the Museum will be completely dependent on the support of our community and supporters, through donations and grants, to remain open beyond July 2012. While State funding for the Museum has remained relatively unchanged since the 1970’s, it will still be difficult to reach the $250,000/year necessary to support museum operations and dedicated personnel. In the next couple of months we will be rolling out several new programs to begin to meet this challenge and raise the necessary funds to remain open. These initial programs and projects include naming opportunities, a friends of the museum program, a benefit exhibit and auction, and benefit production of the play “Red”. We will also expand our advisory board to include members from the community and make changes that will help us come out of this stronger and better prepared to serve the community – including extending our evening and weekend hours.

This challenge comes at a time of growth and resurgence for the Museum – our visitorship has tripled over the last two years and we’ve partnered with numerous University and community organizations to bring you dynamic exhibitions and public programming.

Our hope is that this blog will give you a peek at the inner workings of the Museum as we take steps to reorient ourselves more towards the arts, rewrite our mission, and struggle to raise the necessary funds to remain open. We’ll also post newsworthy items, as well as, ways that you can participate. We want this blog to be a “conversation,” the tone will be conversational. Passion, humor and candor are prized. Being in touch with how we can help make this YOUR museum is prized most of all.