Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

A CONVERSATION: MICHAEL FISCHER, NEVADA CULTURAL AFFAIRS DIRECTOR

"A dentist from Gardnerville?"

Whoa, Nellie, as they probably say in Northern Nevada. Let's not be so quick to judge Michael Fischer, the state's newly appointed director of the Cultural Affairs Department.

After all, he's not just some small-town dentist. He's wrestled cattle, performed in Chautauquas - as former two-term Gov. John Sparks and as Nevada pioneer H.F. Dangberg - and has been dissecting Nevada history since age 11, when he collected old bottles found in the desert.

The lifelong Nevadan is a member of the Western Folk Life Center and Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and served as president of the Douglas County Historical Society.

He loves the land, the culture, the state and its history. This is all Northern Nevada's history, of course.

But Fischer's visit to Las Vegas, Overton and Boulder City last week had him convincing local yokels that he truly cared about our culture.

"I have a lot of homework to do," he says of the north-south split. "For as much as we're constantly staying the same, you guys are constantly reinventing yourself. We have different fences, but we're all kind of living in the same pasture."

And his $110,000-a-year dream job has him giddy at the chance to professionally dabble in his love of history, art and culture.

"I've always wanted to do this," he says.

The Cultural Affairs Department oversees seven museums, the Nevada State Library and Archives, the Historic Preservation Office and the Nevada Arts Council.

Depending on what happens in this next legislative session, it could be a perfect time to step into the position or a terrible time.

The good news: This is the first time the Nevada Commission on Tourism will ask the Legislature for funds to market state museums, a coup if it passes. Museums have little or no money for marketing.

"As far as anybody's memory goes, it's the first time we are including money directly in our budget for museums and state parks for marketing purposes," says Chris Chrystal , spokeswoman for the Nevada Commission on Tourism. "And our museums contribute greatly to cultural tourism. Generally speaking, people would not get on a plane to go to Nevada to see that one museum, but it's something you do while you visit a place that you come to for other reasons."

The budget request proposal asks for $167,500 for fiscal year 2008 and $155,000 for 2009.

The bad news: Plans to move the Nevada State Museum to the Las Vegas Springs Preserve have become more costly since a $35 million bond measure was approved by voters in 2002. Another $11.5 million is needed to move forward with the project. The department is asking for money from the Legislature.

"If we don't get $11.5 million, we'll build the shell of the building to protect it until the next session. It's unlikely we can come up with money ourselves," says Scott Sisco, chief fiscal officer and deputy director of the Cultural Affairs Department. Sisco was interim director before Fischer was named to the post by Gov. Jim Gibbons.

The department would have to wait two years until the next legislative session to request funds. But at the $300,000 monthly inflation rate, Sisco says it could get costly.

Funds aside, talk in Las Vegas about the new director has been positive.

"He's done a lot of historical research. It gives him a firsthand appreciation of what the department has and offers," says Dave Millman, curator of collections and history at Nevada State Museum in Lorenzi Park.

Only eight days on the job, Fischer was reluctant to talk about the Springs Preserve Project and other Las Vegas issues when we caught up with him at the Boulder City Railroad Museum. But he was willing to talk about his interest in the job.

On digging for bottles with his mom:

"In our modern age you're not supposed to do that stuff. Now it's done through the State Historic Office.

"We dug in an old dump in Reno. Lots of times we'd just find them on the surface. There is a lot of history that can be learned from them, a lot of sociological issues.

"It talks about people more, what they ate, some of the diseases they may have had. You could actually find a lot of patent medication - Lydia Pinkham's.

"Fairly common were Hostetler bitters. State of Nevada has the oldest known Tabasco bottle. Yet there is no record of any shipment to Nevada."

How it influenced him

"You'd start looking up for the period of time that the bottle was featured in advertisements in newspapers. It stirred my interest in looking up things in the newspaper of the day, how Reno had been founded and where the original town site was."

How he defines Nevada culture

"Polyglot. A big mass of different things."

On our museums

"I love Overton and the museum at Lorenzi Park. They have tremendous potential. The only thing to prevent us from doing anything more is money. If you want people to go to museums, you have to let people know about museums. "

Cultural tourism and working together

"No one is going to capture a tourist anymore. If we can be a reason for them to stay an extra day, then it will benefit the gaming industry."

On Nevada State Museum's soon-to-be old facility at Lorenzi Park

The old museum site will turn into a branch office of the Cultural Affairs Department .

On Northern vs. Southern Nevada art

"You don't have as much of a subject matter dealing with ghost towns and cowboys. It's really about freedom of expression for the artists."

On Las Vegas history

"Actually, your history starts when I was governor, ma'am" - spontaneously stepping into the character of Sparks, two-term Nevada governor, frontiersman and former Texas Ranger .

What he loves most about Sparks

"He did everything you could do in the West."

His favorite artists

Will James, Western artist and writer who claimed to be a Montana native but was born in Quebec (1892-1942), and William Matthews, American watercolor painter who portrays the cowboy life (1949- ).

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