Arts briefs: Concert and exhibits

Exhibit

Get a gander at

historical books

You need not be a historian, just a history buff, to take an interest in "The American Experience," an aptly titled exhibit of rare books documenting the history of our nation.

Featured in the gallery at Bauman's Rare Books inside the Shoppes at the Palazzo at 3325 Las Vegas Blvd. South, the unique display includes first editions of "The Federalist," one of America's iconic political works, as well as "The Lewis and Clark Expedition," "Indian Tribes of North America" and dozens of other editions. You'll also get to eyeball documents signed by a few American notables named George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin. Fittingly, an array of early United States flags will be there as well.

Starting Thursday and running through March 1, the exhibit is free. For more information, visit www.baumanrarebooks.com.

Art

Shows explore
different approaches

Sock monkeys and transfiguration?

Art in this city is certainly eclectic.

Inside the Trifecta Gallery at the Arts Factory at 107 E. Charleston Blvd., visit the artwork of Angela Kallus, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas graduate whose depictions of the aforementioned sock monkeys and other stuffed critters are presented in what is intriguingly described as "voyeuristic undertones." You can monkey around with Kallus' art through Feb. 24 at the Trifecta Gallery from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekends. For information, call 366-7001 or visit www.trifectagallery.com.

Art from a different perspective is on view at the Winchester Cultural Center Gallery at 3130 McLeod Drive, where Orlando Montenegro's "Transfiguration Phase" is on display. Originally from Managua, Nicaragua, Montenegro also is a UNLV graduate who now teaches drawing as a UNLV adjunct professor.

Through an abstract series of mixed media paintings and drawings, Montenegro examines what gallery curator Wendy Kveck calls "dissolving boundaries between inside and outside and the integration of the body with the environment as reductions and decompositions of particles that indicate continuity in all creation."

Which is surely as intriguing as sock monkeys, if a tad more intellectual-sounding.

Visit "Transfiguration Phase" through March 23 at the gallery from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. For more information, call 455-7340.

Concert

Singers salute

composers at UNLV

Prep your ears for a concert featuring the work of a trio of promising composers named Haydn, Bernstein and Kern (yes, we're joshing -- either that or we're a bit behind in our music education).

Presenting Sunday's "Afternoon of Choral Gems," the 22-voice Musical Arts Singers will honor the composer trifecta at 3 p.m. in the Doc Rando Recital Hall on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway. Under the direction of Douglas Peterson, featured singers John A. Smith, Robert Peterson and Suzanne Russell will lend their pipes to selections including Haydn's "Little Organ Mass," Bernstein's "West Side Story" and Kern's "Showboat," as well as American folk songs and spirituals.

Tickets are $9 for general admission, and $7 for seniors, students and the disabled. Call the UNLV box office at 895-2787.

-- By STEVE BORNFELD