Located on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Barrick promotes awareness of the arts through exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and community activities. Programming is driven by a commitment to diversity and inclusion. The Barrick is a member of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries.
The Museum houses a number of collections available to the public and the UNLV community, including artworks from the former Las Vegas Art Museum; Nevada’s portion of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel 50x50; ceramics from the diverse cultures of Mesoamerica; and works by indigenous and other artists with connections to the Las Vegas area. Exhibitions at the Museum have included objects from these collections as well as installations of work by local and international artists.
The collection encompasses a growing range of contemporary art in various media including painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography, with a special emphasis on work that considers different aspects of life in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. Also postcolonial masks, retablos, textiles, and examples of the visual arts from ongoing North and South American indigenous traditions.
Through research, conservation, and the pursuit of radical interdisciplinary practices, and by cultivating a robust, free program of exhibitions and events, the Barrick is a place where the arts can be part of everyone’s life. The Barrick was founded in 1967 as a natural history museum for the higher education community; after years of showing both artifacts and artworks, it solidified its identity as an art museum in 2012 by joining the UNLV College of Fine Arts. Since then it has hosted a regular program of artist talks, community art workshops, and rotating exhibitions of contemporary and ancient art.
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