Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art

Temporarily closed. UNLV has now put a firm date on it: the museum reopens October 23, 2026 with four new shows going up at once, among them Facing Change: Mexican Masking Today and Ingress: A Photopoetry Exhibition, plus an opening reception from 5 to 9 PM that evening. The shutdown began as a gallery roof job, grew to take in lighting and other work, and slid past its original date. Admission stays free when the doors open again, and hours return to Tuesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM.

The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art is UNLV's campus art museum, and by its own reckoning the only free art museum in the city. It opened in 1967 as a science museum tied to the Desert Research Institute, took Marjorie Barrick's name in 1989, and consolidated its identity as an art museum in 2012 when it joined the UNLV College of Fine Arts. What fills the galleries now is rotating contemporary work from established and emerging artists, several exhibitions a year. Older ethnographic and specimen material from the natural-history era still exists, but the collection the museum actually promotes is contemporary art from Southern Nevada, so don't arrive expecting an archaeology hall. Admission is free, with a suggested voluntary contribution of $5 for adults and $2 for children and seniors.

The practical catches are scheduling and geography. Normal hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM, closed on all state and federal holidays, and even outside this renovation the galleries go dark for several weeks between exhibition rotations, so check the site before driving over. The campus sits a 10–15 minute drive east of the Strip. Come in on East Harmon Avenue until the road ends in a parking lot, look for the building marked Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies, and the museum is at that building's east end beside a desert landscape garden. Visitor parking is metered by day and free after 7 PM on weekdays, after 1 PM on Fridays, and all day Saturday and Sunday. The galleries take 45 minutes to an hour.