In mid-April, the UNLV public history program hosted the National Council on Public History’s annual conference, giving UNLV faculty and graduate students an opportunity to organize events and showcase their work:

• Costume curator and the director of public history at UNLV Deirdre Clemente organized a pop-up fashion exhibition where four teams of four competed to curate and install a Vegas-themed costume exhibition. The clothing used for this mad-cap, collaborative two-hour project is part of the public history program’s study collection and was donated by local collector David Porcello.
• Professor and public historian Andy Kirk won the best book award at the National Council on Public History for his graphic history, Doomtowns: The People and Landscapes of Atomic Testing.
• Public historian Miriam Melton Villanueva organized an ofrenda, a Mexican altar commonly used on Day of the Dead. Working with students, Melton Villanueva created the altar to offer visitors to Las Vegas a place to honor the many lives lost in our city on October 1. This work is an extension of a project that began in collaboration with the Barrick Museum.
• Michael Green, associate director of public history, and graduate students Billy Marino, Shae Cox and Anthony Graham worked with conference organizers on a local program that shared locals’ secrets on where to get the best tacos (Tacos El Gordo) and the city’s historical must-sees, including The Mob Museum.

The conference also gave UNLV graduate students a number of opportunities to make important career connections as they move into their professional lives.