Las Vegas Sun

April 30, 2024

Up and running: Guggenheim, Hermitage museums finally debut

The Guggenheim Foundation and the Hermitage Museum have joined to create a cultural treasure-trove any city would envy.

And Las Vegas is the lucky recipient.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has coupled culture with tourism with the opening of two museums Saturday at the Venetian.

The collaboration is a first between the two world-renowned art entities, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Guggenheim Foundation in New York.

A high-end art space nestled deep in the flashy neon jungle may cause some to pause. But the reason Las Vegas has been added to the Guggenheim's art trail, which includes museums in New York, Spain, Italy and Berlin, is simple, said Lisa Dennison, deputy curator for the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

"It's where the people are," she said.

The Guggenheim Foundation started museum branches around the world in 1976 as a way to extend its collection of artwork and educational programs.

"We have more than one location in America and Europe, and that has created a network of museums that have nurtured significant relationships to each other," Dennison said. "We had ultimately planned to come to Las Vegas. It makes sense."

Hence the union of one of the oldest museums in the world, the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and one of the more affluent, the Guggenheim, in a city known more for flash than substance.

"We are playing to an international audience (in Las Vegas) that is as savvy as they come and who may never (have) been able to see the Guggenheim," Dennison said. "It's the best of both worlds."

The original State Hermitage Museum in Russia was founded in 1764. It holds a collection of more than 3,000 art objects ranging from prehistoric cultures to modern art. The Guggenheim opened in New York in 1959 and is known for its collection of 19th- and 20th-century art works.

"There is no collaboration like that anywhere in the world," Dennison said.

The Guggenheim Hermitage opens with "Masterpieces from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Collections," an exhibit of 45 original pieces from late 19th- and early 20th-century artists such as Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, Monet and Chagall. The exhibit will be changed twice a year.

The Guggenheim Las Vegas will open with the popular "The Art of the Motorcycle," an exhibit of 130 bikes from around the world that display cultural history and style over the past 100 years. The large space will be changed three to five times a year with new art works.

Art in architecture

The courtship began last year, Dennison said, when the Guggenheim Foundation and the Hermitage agreed it would be worthwhile to collaborate. The opening of the Guggenheim Las Vegas and the Guggenheim Hermitage is the beginning of that relationship.

And while the museums may be joined at the hip -- they are housed in the same 70,000-square-foot space -- they are decidedly different inside.

The Guggenheim Las Vegas will feature special collections such as large-scale traveling exhibitions, video and technology-based art.

The 63,700-square-foot Guggenheim Las Vegas museum has 70-foot ceilings. It features open, airy galleries in its luminous space.

A massive skylight with retractable panels stretches 125 feet long and 30 feet wide across the ceiling to let sunlight filter through the massive room.

A 210-by-30-foot trench runs along the middle of the main floor. At times it will be covered with 21 5-ton metal covers, which can be removed to reveal the galleries on the lower level. A 30-foot lime-green staircase connects the main floor to the smaller galleries below.

The large space of the Guggenheim Las Vegas opens the door for extensive programs and exhibits that could not have been seen in Las Vegas before, Dennison said.

"It allows us to develop exhibitions specifically for (Las Vegas) here," Dennison said. "This is important for us."

By comparison, the Guggenheim Hermitage is more intimate. The 7,660-square-foot space has walls of Cor-Ten steel, a brushed, rusted-metal surface representative of the 18th century classical galleries of the Hermitage in Russia.

The light maple-wood floors and ceilings of the four interior 1,500-square-foot galleries lie in contrast against the brushed-steel walls.

The Guggenheim Hermitage is affectionately called the "Jewel Box," compared to the Guggenheim Las Vegas "Big Box" space next door, Dennison said.

"For the smaller Hermitage space we wanted something beautiful for exhibitions of 50 pieces of art," she said.

The buildings were designed by Rem Koolhaas, a renowned Dutch architect.

"Once you are in the space, there's no reference to the external world," Dennison said. "It's transformative. We are thinking very much about the internal experience and what art does and what we can take through the art."

Settling in

The creation of the Guggenheim Las Vegas and Guggenheim Hermitage is unique to the art world as much as it is to Las Vegas, John Buchanan, curator of the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, said.

Buchanan has worked extensively with the Hermitage in Russia as well as the Las Vegas Art Museum.

"It's like giving birth, I think," Buchanan said. "It means not only will they be sending you 'The Art of the Motorcycle' for that large (exhibit) space, but some of the permanent collections from the Guggenheim as well as the Hermitage. What you have there are two wonderful museums offering the best of both worlds."

And he should know.

In 1995 Buchanan met Baroness Helene de Ludinghauser, the last remaining family member of the illustrious Stroganoff family of Russia, in Paris.

The Stroganoff family was known as one of the greatest art collectors for 500 years, before the Russians in the early part of the last century seized their art. The massive collection was broken and sold to private collectors and museums around the world.

The Hermitage, Baroness de Ludinghauser and 60 museum curators from around the world, including Buchanan, gathered paintings, sculptures and furniture that had been commissioned, collected or owned by the Stroganoff family before the seizure.

The 300-piece exhibit was completed in 1999 and traveled to the Portland Art Museum in February 2000. More than 300,000 people filed through the museum to see the Stroganoff's reunited collection.

"It was fascinating to pull together and very popular," Buchanan said. "The Hermitage just has phenomenal things. (Las Vegas) will greatly benefit from them being there."

The location also benefits the Guggenheim and the Hermitage.

"They (the Guggenheim and the Hermitage) get more name recognition and visibility on the American radar screen and (visitors) get the benefit of seeing their great treasures," Buchanan said.

He also said that he hopes that the added attention to culture in Las Vegas will spill over into the private sector and lift the prominence and visibility of the Las Vegas Art Museum.

"One can help the other," he said. "It should be a synergy between all of those organizations."

But will it be?

David Hickey, professor of art criticism and theory at UNLV, isn't so sure. He is only mildly excited about the possible boost to the city's cultural identity.

"I think it's great," Hickey said. "I don't have to go to St. Petersburg to see great art. But no one has ever adequately explained to me what art does for people who aren't interested in art. It'll be nice for those who are."

The few pieces of original art by masters that have graced small galleries in large Strip properties have not rallied Las Vegans to art shows, Hickey said.

When his Bellagio hotel opened in 1998 Steve Wynn included works by art masters Picasso and Van Gogh, among others, as a permanent collection at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art. The collection was returned to Wynn after the takeover of Bellagio by MGM Resorts, Inc., in February 2000.

"It was wonderful when the Bellagio show was up, that certainly benefited us," Hickey said. "But I don't know that anybody went to go see it."

The odds are the museums on the Strip will create a stir among art lovers locally and internationally, Hickey said, but it will more than likely continue to be a world away for many locals.

The museums may be unique to Las Vegas, but Las Vegas is a unique city in and of itself, he said.

"That which is on the Strip does not penetrate the culture," Hickey said. "People move to Henderson to get away from the Strip, and if there is art on the Strip they are getting away from that."

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