You’re in Reno, but don’t care much for gambling. What do you do while your friends are playing the slots? Visit the city’s specialty museums. Most of them are small, but they contain exhibits well worth seeing.
The Wilbur D. May Museum
Take the Wilbur D. May Museum, for example. The museum’s story begins in the pre-Depression months of 1929 when Wilbur, son of the May Department Stores’ founder, decided to sell his stocks and travel around the world. More than 30 trips and safaris later, the inveterate collector had accumulated enough trinkets and treasures to fill a museum – and fortunately for Reno, May had established his home base just south of town in 1936.
Built in 1985, three years after his death, the 10,000 square-foot May Museum in Rancho San Rafael Park holds everything from priceless objets d’art to gimcrack curios. Six galleries (Europa, Oceania, Far East, South Asia, Africa and America) contain artifacts as well as dioramas featuring indigenous stuffed animals. Since May rarely collected just one of anything, cases are crammed with T’ang Dynasty animals and African masks; hundreds of Oriental miniatures, dozens of pistols and rifles. Gobelin tapestries and Navajo rugs are among objects decorating the walls.