If you’ve ever wondered how books will survive the digital age, why slavery still matters or what a three-stringed lute says about Japanese identity (and admit it—you have), check out UNLV’s University Forum lecture series, a delightful hodgepodge of free talks centered on all things social, historical and cultural.

Back in September, the Barrick Museum launched a new program allowing UNLV faculty and staff a chance to curate exhibits by plucking works stored in its collection rooms.

The North Las Vegas Library District will host a screening of “Latino Americans,” an award-winning PBS documentary film, on Thursday.

With the entertainment options in Las Vegas, sometimes overlooked are the museums that reside here.

Based on how the late Marjorie Barrick's wishes to keep the Barrick Lecture Series going strong after her death and how the lectures have been allowed to languish, I'm not sure I'd give the UNLV Foundation millions. Presuming I had millions.

Thankfulness has a profound range. In a moment, it might be about taking a bite of a really great sandwich. Or it might be about having food at all, or being alive in the wake of a tragedy the world won’t ever stop mourning.

Break Ups and Tear Downs at the Barrick Museum presents Las Vegas artists Wendy Kveck and JK Russ, along with former Las Vegan Erin Stellmon, who recently left for the East Coast. Deconstruction is key to the exhibition: All three artists process visual representations by cutting them up. But the “break up” and “tear down” title omits that the artists also reassemble the fragments, generating fresh, new ways of looking at familiar content.

Talking Art (September 3-December 3, Barrick Museum) The UNLV Art Department’s every-Thursday fall lecture series kicks off with LA’s Allison Miller, followed by Hyperallergic’s editor in chief and co-founder Hrag Vartanian a week later.

Nevada is an inspiration to many artists in many different ways.

Reacting to the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico last September, Las Vegas artist Javier Sanchez created a multimedia installation confronting the ongoing brutality of the Mexican drug wars. The haunting experience in the Barrick Museum reverberated much more intensely than ephemeral headlines on social media and transcended the usual impersonal data tied to tragedy.

Ah, the pitfalls of the group art exhibition! The goulash factor looms large. How could it not? Art is valued because it’s fiercely distinctive. So when you assemble works by radically different artists—an expressionist still life, say, by Marty Walsh, and a slick, post-conceptualist abstract by Yek—the risk of mishmash runs high. So how did UNLV’s Marjorie Barrick Museum create a coherent curatorial statement with the terrifically diverse Recent Acquisitions?

With rotating exhibits, visiting artist lectures and smashing works from its own collection to dip into—plus those from the Las Vegas Art Museum—Barrick has become the sweet spot for contemporary art in town. UNLV, 702-895-3381.