You can’t stroll around John Millei’s If 6 Turned Out to Be 9: Selected Work, at UNLV’s Marjorie Barrick Museum. Nope—you have to stand there. In front of each painting. Look some more at those forms and shapes. Step back. Squint a bit. Move on to the next painting; come back to the last one.

“Memory” is a tough sell in a city that constantly reinvents itself and obliterates its former identity. Yet it’s the subject of the peculiar and haunting Kennedy Obsession show at the Marjorie Barrick Museum. New media artist (and current UNLV artist-in-residence) Deborah Aschheim—known for her elegant installations exploring the science/art divide—has turned her attention to the game-changing era of JFK’s presidency.

Well aware that an interactive radio broadcast based on a multi-instrument sound apparatus is not something the average person comes across, artist David Sanchez Burr found the Neon Museum Boneyard fitting for his target audience—those who might not frequent contemporary galleries or art institutions.

Everybody wants to get into the act. Which is exactly the idea behind — and the spirit of — “citizen speak.”

If dug from the wreckage and dusted off hundreds of years from now, the introduction to Camille Paglia’s Glittering Images might seem a cautionary prelude to an intellectual end times of sorts, a last-minute plea for society to take hold of its senses and actually “see.”

In mining historical archives for Kennedy-era photographs, artist Deborah Aschheim bypassed images of the famous family, opting instead for the crowds caught up in the reverie and spirit of Kennedy fever.

In 2010 artist David Sanchez Burr launched a project based on the idea of a community broadcasting itself in real time, an art experience reliant on chance and audience participation. He provided the instruments and other sound devices, the audience interacted and the project evolved, moving from the foothills of Sequoia National Park to galleries and art spaces in Las Vegas and Tennessee.