Capital City Arts Initiative to present public talk, 'Why Did You Choose Justin Favela?'

On Wednesday, October 16, the Capital City Arts Initiative (CCAI) will present a public talk, “Why Did You Choose Justin Favela?” by Nevada Museum of Art’s curator, JoAnne Northrup. The event is part of CCAI’s ongoing Nevada Neighbors speakers’ series and will take place at 5:30pm at the Brick, 108 E Proctor Street, Carson City.

There will be an informal reception for Northrup preceding the event at 5pm. No tickets needed; the public is cordially invited.

In the talk, JoAnne Northrup will discuss how she came to know about Las Vegas-based artist Justin Favela’s work, and why she finds it both critically insightful, art historically relevant, and visually exciting. Northrup has included Favela’s work in two major exhibitions at the Nevada Museum of Art and in 2018 the Museum acquired a work by him for the permanent collection. Find out why!

Northrup, curatorial director and curator of contemporary art at the Nevada Museum of Art, curated the exhibition Unsettled, which explores the relationship between landscape and culture. Iconic Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha collaborated with Northrup on this major exhibition, which traveled to the Anchorage Museum in 2018 and travels to the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2018-19.

The Unsettled book was published by Hirmer Verlag and has received many awards including the American Alliance of Museum’s 2018 “best in show” Frances Smyth-Ravenel Prize for Excellence in Publication Design. From 2012-2016, Northrup worked in collaboration with Art Production Fund, New York to produce a major site-specific public art installation on BLM-managed land outside Las Vegas, Nevada: Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains, which debuted in May 2016.

Seven Magic Mountains attracts one-thousand visitors each day and is slated to become a permanent fixture in the southern Nevada desert. Prior to her time in Nevada, Northrup was a Fulbright senior research scholar at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM, or Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie) in Karlsruhe, Germany. As chief curator (2008-11) and senior curator (2001-08) at the San Jose Museum of Art, California. Northrup received a B.A. in Art History from the University of California Santa Barbara and an M.A. from the University of Southern California’s Art History/Museum Studies Program.

As part of her Nevada Neighbors activities, Northup will also speak about Favela’s work to students and faculty at one of CCAI’s partner high schools and at Sierra Nevada College.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community planning and building for the area through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, John and Grace Nauman Foundation, Carson City Cultural Commission, Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, NV Energy Foundation, Southwest Gas Corporation Foundation, U.S. Bank Foundation, and its members.

For additional information, please visit CCAI’s website at arts-initiative.org.