Museum scales back annual gala, auction, meets less ambitious goal

By Kristen Peterson

Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.

With the economy in crisis and more uncertainty ahead, this year’s gala season was expected to be a little grim.

But the quiet floating over the live auction for the Las Vegas Art Museum’s annual gala Saturday was still a little awkward. Last year’s auction went like gangbusters, but a couple of this year’s items sold for less than the suggested opening bid and one sold at opening bid.

The evening’s profits came in at $432,553, down from last year’s event, which brought in $533,275.

Libby Lumpkin, executive director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, says the museum anticipated this and sized down the gala, including booking 40 tables rather than 50 for the event held at Wynn Las Vegas.

“We met our goal for the auction, which was very gratifying,” Lumpkin said. “We’ll sally through the waters. We’re aware that it’s not the greatest climate.”

The event drew 380 people. The silent auction raised $63,063 and included artwork by Tim Bavington, Angela Kallus, David Ryan, Patrick Nickel and Alison Elizabeth Taylor and furniture by Knoll Design.

The live auction was scaled down from last year’s gala, which included a day in Los Angeles looking at art with actor Dennis Hopper (final bid $8,500); James Turrell’s tour of his Roden Crater project (final bid $35,000); a tour of Robert Rauschenberg’s New York studio; and a VIP tour of the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 art center (final bid $18,000).

This year’s live auction included a trip to Art Basel Miami with Lumpkin, a Los Angeles art experience, an aerial helicopter tour of Michael Heizer’s Double Negative and a Sante Fe art experience. It raised $29,000, less than half what last year’s live auction did.

Board member Patrick Duffy wasn’t surprised: “It’s akin to the economic times.”

The evening also raised $45,494 for the museum’s education program. That includes a matching donation by Andrew Pascal, president of Wynn Las Vegas.

The gala, held in conjunction with the exhibit “Las Vegas Collects Contemporary,” came after the museum learned it will not be part of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

Museum officials had been talking with members of the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center Foundation about building a museum on the Smith Center campus.

“At the end of the day, they were probably going to need more space than we had available,” says Myron Martin, president of the Las Vegas Performing Arts Foundation, adding that a piece of block on the campus could still be used for a cultural institution.

The museum, adjacent to a library on West Sahara Avenue, originally planned to lease the All-American SportsPark on Sunset Road and unveiled its plans at last year’s gala.

Those plans changed this year when the board decided it wanted the museum to have its own building. Lumpkin says the museum will start to look at other options. “We’re really focused on downtown,” she says. “We need to be downtown.”