Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Brush aside pay-per-view art policy

A FEW YEARS ago, I visited San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, where, after taking in a fine exhibit of California paintings, the drawings of Paul Klee and photos by Edward Weston, I dropped a bundle at the museum's blackjack tables. Fortunately, my wife cleaned up at video poker. Now we're looking forward to a stop at New York's famed Whitney Museum, and not only for its stunning trove of contemporary art -- I hear the action at its race and sports book is hot ...

All right, I confess, I fabricated some of that: I'm not really certain the photos were Weston's. But surely the rest of it is believable enough, particularly if you've been listening to Steve Wynn pushing for a $10 admission to his Bellagio art collection. "Every museum in the world charges admission in order to survive," he insists. So you might be excused for concluding there's not much difference between his place and, say, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

But, being a savvy reader, you're perfectly aware that museums do not have casinos to support them. Bellagio, of course, is a casino, which guarantees it the kind of revenue stream your average museum director would give his left Pollock for. Wynn hardly needs 10 bucks a head to survive. So it's been amusing to hear him frame his argument as if the Bellagio were just another large-hearted nonprofit museum trying to bring culture to the masses. Being a savvy reader, you're perfectly aware that it's not.

The admission issue is linked to the tax breaks Mirage Resorts is seeking (an estimated $15 million the first year) under an art-tax break it muscled through last year's Legislature. This, probably rightly, upsets many who don't think the public should have to pay to see art it's already subsidized. The state Tax Commission has, for the moment, decreed that the collection be open for free 20 hours a week, 35 weeks a year.

Every museum in the world charges admission in order to survive. Yes and no. New York's Museum of Modern Art will clip you for $9.50 (except on Friday evenings, when, according to its answering machine, "you pay what you wish"). But the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a "suggested" admission of $8 -- suggested! You don't have to pay it! Yet somehow the Met staggers on.

Clearly, Mirage Resorts would like us to consider the Bellagio gallery a munificent public service -- think of the schoolchildren exposed to their first Renoirs! Well, noblesse oblige aside, I don't believe for an instant that Wynn amassed his fab collection for the enrichment of mankind, unless you define "mankind" as "human beings who hold Mirage Resorts stock." That it will benefit Las Vegas -- both by toning up the city's image and by exposing its residents to exceptional art -- is undeniable. But that's not why he did it. He did it to lend his casino an air of European refinement monied tourists might find appealing. In other words, as a marketing gimmick. It may seem an act of philistinism to equate Picasso and Renoir to the Mirage's volcano or Treasure Island's pirate battle, but in the dynamics of casino come-ons, they serve exactly the same purpose.

So, I don't think a few pay-what-you-wish evenings would do the big guy any harm.

Now here's the part where I give Wynn a little benefit of the doubt. For one, I won't get cynical about Wynn's passion for his art. I'll grant that he genuinely loves the stuff, even as he exploits its promo potential. Lord, who wouldn't? We're talking about Picassos and Klines and DeKoonings here; I get flushed just thinking about it. Nor do I begrudge him the tax break (not too much, anyway). I'm frankly in favor of governmental coddling of the arts; culture is a fragile thing, as much in need of government subsidy as wheat farming. And, whatever your feelings about Wynn, you have to appreciate any arts patronage in Las Vegas.

Further, there's no small amount of class animus in the anti-Wynn position -- we groundlings hate to see fat cats get fatter -- which hardly seems the ideal basis for policy decisions. Also, isn't there something a bit logically shaky, a bit uncharitably literal-minded, about the double-dipping argument? Dozens of cities have spent public money on luxury-boxed sports domes for profitable teams, and no one expects baseball games to be free.

Yeah, and so what? None of that should obscure the fundamental truth that Wynn's artwork -- however luminous, however balming to the souls of its viewers -- is a shrewdly calculated element of his casino operation. His soon-to-be-fabulously-successful casino operation. Official decisions about admission and so forth should be made in that light, not in the false light of what real museums do. At least not until the Met installs a Megabucks machine.

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