Denise Duarte joins Nevada Arts Council staff

CARSON CITY, Nevada (April 7, 2017) – Denise Duarte, a fifth-generation native Nevadan and lifelong artist, has joined the Nevada Arts Council as its community arts specialist in the Las Vegas office.

She joins the agency after serving as the director of development at Left of Center Art Gallery in North Las Vegas and previously as a public arts specialist for Clark County.

“I’m excited to join the Nevada Arts Council team, especially here in Southern Nevada,” Duarte said. “Encouraging and developing the arts in Southern Nevada is a critical step in our state.”

In her new role with the Nevada Arts Council, Duarte will work with arts leaders and communities across the state to help strengthen Nevada’s arts and culture infrastructure.  With a focus on the Southern Nevada region, she will foster new relationships with communities, develop local and regional networks/partnerships and expand upon existing programs to enrich communities statewide. In addition, she will support cultural planning at the city and county levels, develop new programming to further the agency’s mission, and provide technical assistance to arts and culture organizations statewide.

Duarte’s Nevada roots run deep. She was born in Reno before her family moved to Carson City for several years before eventually ending up in Las Vegas, where she graduated from high school before returning to Reno to attend the University of Nevada, Reno for college.

She received her Master of Fine Arts in Community Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art where she received the Hilda Blaustein Foundation Scholarship and Fellowship.

As Clark County’s Public Arts Specialist in 2014, Duarte wrote the grant for Clark County’s Maryland parkway Public Art and Urban Design Plan, a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. A year later, she served as a juror for the NEA Our Town Grant Panel, Arts Engagement, Cultural Planning and Design Projects.