Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

EDITORIAL:

Recognize and celebrate the classiness of our Strip

Back in the day, the Strip was mostly a collection of boxy casinos with hotel rooms stacked above them. “Class” was defined as a fine steak, a dry martini, a terrific lounge act or headliner, and a good night at the tables (or the slots, where the wives and girlfriends would be parked with buckets of coins).

During the day, guests slept in late, then continued their recovery by heading over to the pool, the golf course, the coffee shop or maybe a gift store, before cleaning up for another night of revelry. Vegas was what Vegas was — eat, drink, take in a show and gamble the night away. For uppercase Culture, this place wasn’t New York City.

Caesars Palace, which opened in 1966, brought us distinction, standing out for its architecture and decor, even if much of its art was faux. Then Steve Wynn came along, elevating the Strip by opening the sparkling Mirage in 1989, then winning still more admiration with the luxurious, art-infused Bellagio in 1998. Wynn loved fine art, peppered his public spaces with marvelous pieces and he dedicated space to a fine arts gallery that has hosted spectacular exhibitions.

Meanwhile, across the street, a gutsy Venetian took fine art to a new level, opening in 2001 the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum for world-class touring exhibits (old-timers might remember it as the “Jewel Box”) and the much larger Guggenheim Las Vegas, a showplace for larger exhibitions.

Alas, both would close. After Wynn set off on his own and bought the Desert Inn, he installed another art museum, which then closed as he demolished the old resort to accommodate Wynn Las Vegas. Today, the only art museum along the Strip is the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.

That isn’t to say we have suffered terribly, thanks especially to Wynn’s continued investment in artwork that he displays publicly and to another man in town who studied both urban planning and art history in college. That person is Jim Murren, chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts International. Suffice to say, he brings certain sensibilities to the job that other casino bosses only wished they possessed.

We first saw it at CityCenter, with one of the largest public displays of corporate-owned art in the world. Among the pieces: Henry Moore’s “Reclining Connected Forms,” installed in a pocket park alongside Aria that is more quaint than functional but demonstrates Murren’s spirit of embracing a new aesthetic. Just steps from the park, above the registration desk, hangs a wall sculpture of the Colorado River by Maya Lin that demands to be studied.

The newest evidence of Murren’s influence along the Strip comes with the completion of the Park, a narrow swath of land between two resorts — New York-New York and Monte Carlo, leading from the Strip to T-Mobile Arena. It’s certainly not the first place along the boulevard for visitors to pause and reflect — will anything ever top the Bellagio fountains? — but it does provide an escape from the cacophony of the Strip, with places to sit among quieting walls of water, (real!) shade trees and 16 steel shade structures towering up to 75 feet high and glimmering in multiple colors at night. And whether it’s considered fine art or a structural oddity inspired by Burning Man, the 40-foot-tall “Bliss Dance,” a 7,500-pound sculpture of a nude woman sheathed in stainless steel mesh, is intended as a testament to female strength and self-confidence.

At the least, Murren’s new park will offer a respite: a chance to pause and ponder, take pictures, listen to water and look up at trees and shade cones assembled by a shipbuilder across the Atlantic.

There was a lot to like about Las Vegas in the 1960s. There’s a lot more to like about it today, and public-displayed art along the Strip, whether sublime or odd, has much to do with it.

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