The America Association of Museums has awarded the Nevada Museum of Art its coveted 2012 Frances Smyth-Ravenel Prize for Excellence in Publication Design for the Museum’s publication Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment. This grand prize award is bestowed upon only one museum in the United States each year. The deluxe 288-page publication, published by Skira Rizzoli, New York, highlights more than 150 photographic works, by more than 100 artists, from the Museum’s permanent photography collection of the same name. Past winners of the Frances Smyth-Ravenel Prize for Excellence in Publication Design include the International Center of Photography, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC.

“This publication has garnered praise and enthusiasm from writers, artists, critics and art lovers alike. The receipt of AAM’s grand prize further confirms that both the book and collection are powerful and thought-provoking examinations of human impacts on our global environment,” commented David B. Walker, Executive Director | CEO, Nevada Museum of Art. “The Museum is truly honored to be selected for recognition by the AAM and receive this prestigious award.”

A keystone of the Museum’s thematic focus on art and environment, the Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment publication examines the many ways that humans interact with natural and built environments. Designed by Brad Bartlett of Brad Bartlett Design, Los Angeles, the book is edited and authored by Ann M. Wolfe, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Nevada Museum of Art, and features essays by Wolfe; Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDGBLOG and Contributing Editor for Wired UK; Lucy Lippard, cultural critic; WJT Mitchell, editor, scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, and Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago.

“The photographs in the Altered Landscape are drawn from the Museum’s signature permanent collection: the Carol Franc Buck Altered Landscape Photography Collection,” commented Wolfe. “It is gratifying to know that this collection of images— revealing how humans have marked, mined, toured, tested, and developed landscapes over the last fifty years—is recognized by our peers in the museum community as making an important and timely contribution to the discourse on contemporary photography.”