Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities: The Silver State's Cultural Twins

By Tony Manfredi and Christina Barr

When President Johnson signed the National Arts and Humanities Act into law in 1965, no one envisioned the extent to which the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) would become embedded in our lives. The creation of the state arts and humanities councils quickly followed, and the Nevada Arts Council (founded in 1967) and Nevada Humanities (founded in 1971) have served Nevadans faithfully, as on-the-ground extensions of the endowments, ever since. 

Every October we celebrate this collaboration with National Arts and Humanities Month, which celebrates the arts and humanities across the nation and helps raise awareness about the powerful role that the arts and humanities play in our lives. In Nevada, a significant portion of our public cultural programs is supported and bolstered by NEA and NEH funding through the regrant of federal funds facilitated the Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities. Both the Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities also implement a host of programs throughout the year that engage millions of audience members annually. These programs help create a vital creative force and a high quality of life in all corners of the Silver State. 

This year, to celebrate National Arts and Humanities Month, the Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities have joined forces to produce Shaken & Stirred, a creative arts and humanities evening mixer where two entirely unrelated topics find common ground during brief tag team lectures. Each speaker gets ten minutes to teach us something new and then audience members ask questions and find the commonalities between the two topics. Ideas start to mix and anything can happen. Please join us in Reno on Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at Plaza Maya for Shaken & Stirred: Optical Illusions and Illegal Dancing with Gideon Caplovitz and Louis Niebur, and in Las Vegas on Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery for Shaken & Stirred: Uniform Work and Aesthetic Entanglement with Brittany Bronson and Gig Depio. We can promise you an evening of mind bending arts and humanities fun. 

Tony Manfredi is the Executive Director of the Nevada Arts Council. Christina Barr is the Executive Director of Nevada Humanities.