Reno, Nev. ? With its single black staircase and a breathtaking rooftop sculpture garden, Nevada’s “biggest little city” has a renovated art museum that takes the town a step beyond the gaming industry.

The new Nevada Art Museum is a four-story, 60,000-square foot black steel building that is reminiscent of a ship at sea. It is four times the size of its predecessor and includes a 180-seat theater, several galleries and a restaurant.

But the feature that has drawn the most attention is the rooftop sculpture garden and its views of the snowcapped Sierra.

“This is sort of the crown of the building,” architect Will Bruder said. “There aren’t a lot of great roofs in the history of architecture.”

A June grand opening culminated a seven-year effort to replace the old, 15,000-square foot museum as Reno increasingly looks to the arts to help attract tourists as it tries to diversify its gambling-based economy.

“We were a good small-sized museum. Now we’re a good mid-size museum and we’re aiming to be an outstanding mid-sized museum,” said Peter Pool, president of the board of directors.

“For the first time, we’ll be able to exhibit works in our permanent collection and major traveling exhibitions that we’ve never been able to attract to Reno before,” he said.

That includes the headliner at the grand opening, “Diego Rivera and Twentieth Century Mexican Art: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection,” featuring works by Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Bruder got the idea for the rooftop when he visited Reno and spotted the window-walled “Sky Room” topping the old Mapes Hotel before it was demolished.

“I asked, ‘What’s that glass room up on the top?’ I thought that a gaming room with four sides of glass at the top was intriguing,” he said.

Inviting entrance

Museum visitors enter a grand hall atrium where a single black staircase supported by a center pole invites them to make the climb toward the ceiling some 60 feet up.

“We wound the staircase up to the sky and it literally does go up to the sky. It’s a slender penetration like a crevasse up a canyon. It draws you up,” Bruder said.

Randomly placed skylights “utilize and manipulate the light” as it changes with the day and the season. “It becomes like weaving a beautiful quilt,” he said.

Once at the top, visitors make their way through glass doors to the rooftop.

Rising to the south and west is the Sierra, including 10,900-foot Mount Rose. The west view is partially obscured by sections of black steel that make a wall with openings — nine openings from 8 inches to 3 feet wide — rising from 4 feet high on one end to about 12 feet high at the other.

‘Edge of Reno’

Bruder acknowledged that “many were disgruntled” when he began erecting the wall, in part to serve as a wind break. “It’s about focus. We have created a space that is like a camera lens. … Unabashedly, there is the edge of Reno and the skyline and there is the world beyond.”

Bruder, 56, is a sculptor from Arizona known for his public buildings, including libraries in Portland, Maine; Madison, Wis.; Jackson, Wyo.; and the New School for the Arts in Tempe, Ariz.

The new building is reminiscent of the rock outcroppings that dot the rugged landscape of the Black Rock Desert 120 miles north of Reno, he said. Tapered windows face the West, where Bruder points to the nearby mountains, the “black shadows of the fir trees, the topography of the basalt rock,” he said.

“Reno is interesting architecturally, but there’s a lot of boxes here,” he said, gesturing to neighboring office buildings.

“There’s not a lot of things beyond the box. A black building is sort of unheard of in Reno,” Bruder said.

“On one hand I wanted it to be mysterious and on the other hand I wanted it to be welcoming.”

Bruder said he designed the museum to serve many community needs.

“It’s a place in the city where people can come, a place of conversation, a place of challenge, a place to allow the citizens of Reno and visitors to see the world from a different view,” he said. “That’s what this mysterious dark vessel is all about.”