Published December 1, 2023

Art around town: Creative exhibition spaces

by Kris Vagner

In Reno, there are a lot more professional artists than there are galleries to support them. Venues such as Stremmel Gallery, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the Lilley Museum at the University of Nevada, Reno always mount wonderful, thought-provoking exhibitions, but there’s something that many cities our size have that we don’t—a thriving ecosystem of mid-level galleries. While entry-level artists have access to local venues that can help launch their careers, and artists who’ve been working for decades often contract with out-of-town museums and galleries, the vast majority of working artists need an in-between level of gallery in order to keep their work in the public eye. Those are the venues that are harder to come by here.

Fortunately, Reno has an enthusiastic community of arts administrators who’ve found some creative workarounds to this problem. Professionally curated art exhibitions rotate every few weeks or months on cafe walls, inside public buildings, and even on billboards. Here are a few to keep an eye out for. 

Curated cafes + surprising street views

The Holland Project—Reno’s exuberant youth arts organization/all-ages concert hall/midtown gallery—runs the Offsite Galleries program, which hires high school and college-level interns to curate and oversee contemporary exhibitions in popular eateries like Cafe Capello and Sizzle Pie. The exhibitions in this series often highlight the work queer and/or POC artists. The current show at Cafe Capello is Taking Space / Tomando Espacio, organized by Ricardo Rubalcaba Paredes, a Reno artist born to Mexican parents, whose curation addresses oppression and resistance in queer, Chicanx identity and culture. 

Another Holland Project initiative that makes it easy to get a glimpse of thought-provoking local artwork is HP Billboard Gallery. The project features a handful of individual 2D artworks, blown-up and displayed on billboards above Reno surface streets. The billboard images rotate monthly in downtown-adjacent neighborhoods like Midtown and the Wells Avenue district, and they also sometimes pop up a mile or two to the east or west of downtown. Check the project’s webpage for current locations, and you can get to know some of the past artists—who range from students to art-world veterans—in this guide. 

To stay in the know, follow @hpgalleries on Instagram. 

City-run galleries

The long, curved, white wall in the lobby of Reno City Hall is otherwise known as the Metro Gallery. It specializes in art shows that would look right at home in a museum. Highlights from recent memory include works by Joan Arrizzabalga, the Reno artist who’s been exploring casino culture using textiles and ceramics for decades; James Gayles, a watercolorist who moved from Oakland to Reno in 2020, and selections from the Marjorie Barrick Museum at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The City of Reno Employee Art Exhibition opens Dec. 11. 

The City also runs two hallway galleries—Gallery East and Gallery West—at the McKinley Arts & Culture Center on Riverside Drive, where you’ll see rotating displays of professional and student artwork of many stripes. 

To stay in the know, follow @renobigartslittlecity on Instagram, Reno Big Arts Little City on Facebook, or @renoartscity on X (formerly Twitter.)

Kris Vagner is the Managing Editor for the Reno News & Review and the editor and founder of Double Scoop, a nonprofit news site that covers Nevada’s fast-growing visual arts community. 

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