The Nevada Museum of Art creates a dynamic urban presence in downtown Reno. The Museum frames a series of well-scaled and formed galleries and references the geologic formations of the nearby Black Rock Desert. The carefully lapped, handcrafted random seam pattern of the Anthra-Zinc applied over the west facades exaggerate the form of the building with a unique organic tapestry of shade and shadow. Entry into the Museum is through a compressed wedge of intimately scaled walls inserted under the raked black ceiling of the first level public spaces. The visitor is at once inside and outside in a glass pavilion and four-story skylight atrium, carving through the entire section of the building. Lifting one’s eyes upward, the atrium is an ever-changing chamber of form, light, and shadow. The roof terrace sculpture garden caps the atrium and staircase, and is formed by the edges of the building as they sweep up on a rake to the sky where the syncopated rhythm of parapet crenellations to the west frame the city, the sky and the distance views of the Black Rock Desert.