Las Vegas places a bet on a new art museum, with help from LA

Las Vegas has the Neon Museum, the Mob Museum, the Punk Rock Museum and the Pinball Hall of Fame, among others. But it is the largest city in the United States without a major art museum, despite several attempts over the years.

Now it looks as if that will change, thanks to the unusual collaboration of two art-world heavyweights: Elaine Wynn, Las Vegas casino magnate and art collector, and Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The two have joined forces to help create the new Las Vegas Museum of Art, with a plan that took a major step forward Wednesday when the Las Vegas City Council agreed to give 1.5 acres in the city’s downtown cultural district to the museum for $1. The museum, a 90,000-square-foot structure expected to cost $150 million, has hopes of opening in 2028.

“I am excited about the prospect of adding a new art museum to our city,” Mayor Carolyn Goodman, said in a statement. “Art and culture has been a key pillar in the development of the city of Las Vegas over the last 25 years.”

Wynn, who co-founded Wynn Resorts and Mirage Resorts with her former husband (and fellow art collector), Steve Wynn, said she hoped the museum would be her legacy and give Las Vegas the fine arts institution it deserves.

“My days are numbered,” said Wynn, 82. “I thought, ‘What’s my final gift?’ I want to leave an imprint other than my name on a hotel casino.”

The museum is a partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where Wynn has been a major donor through the years and serves as co-chair of the board. While the Las Vegas museum will be operated as an independent nonprofit arts organization, it will not have its own collection, at least at first: Artworks and curatorial expertise will be lent by LACMA, and shows that originate in Los Angeles will travel to Las Vegas.

“Starting a regional museum from scratch is a difficult task,” Govan said. “We can help nurture and birth this museum. In 20 years, maybe they’re like, ‘Goodbye, LACMA, we have our own thing going.’ But maybe it’s a new model for expanding access to culture without the deep infrastructure that it takes to care for collections.”

The new museum — which Wynn said would not bear her name — has enlisted an exciting architect, Francis Kéré, a native of Burkina Faso who won the Pritzker Prize in 2022 but has yet to do a major building in the United States.

The museum will be built in Symphony Park, across the street from the Smith Center for the Performing Arts and near the Discovery Children’s Museum.

Kéré’s museum design calls for two stories of exhibition space elevated above an open plaza and adjacent sculpture park. Kéré, known for indoor-outdoor spaces that are organic to their surroundings, has designed schools, housing and health care centers. For the Las Vegas project, Kéré said he drew inspiration from the tranquility of Paul Revere Williams’ Guardian Angel Cathedral, just north of Wynn Las Vegas.

“I want to learn from the local materials and then create something that is grounding, far from the neon, celebratory atmosphere,” the architect said in a telephone interview, “an island of calm where you can retreat.”

The new museum will have its own board of trustees and its own director, Heather Harmon, 48, a fourth-generation Las Vegas resident who serves as co-executive director of Triple Aught Foundation, a Nevada-based nonprofit that owns and operates the monumental sculpture “City” by Michael Heizer in Central Eastern Nevada.

“Having grown up here, it’s something I’ve always wanted for Las Vegas,” Harmon said of the museum, calling it “the missing piece of the puzzle.”

But the plan has drawn some criticism in Los Angeles, where LACMA is working on a $720 million building project that is expected to be completed in 2025. Christopher Knight, art critic for the Los Angeles Times — who has criticized the new Los Angeles museum building for not having more gallery space — questioned why Southern California should be sending art to Nevada. “LACMA’s satellite arrangement gives Las Vegas a lot, even if L.A. effectively gets nothing from the deal,” he wrote.

Govan said the Las Vegas arrangement is in keeping with the Los Angeles museum’s strategy of reaching a broader audience by extending beyond its walls. He also said that having additional locations such as Las Vegas could help attract gifts of art from collectors perpetually concerned about whether the art they donate gets put on view.

Many museums are experimenting with expanding their geographic reach by opening satellites or new locations, or entering into partnerships. The Guggenheim — which has museums in New York; Venice, Italy; Bilbao, Spain; and is building one in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — briefly had an exhibition hall in Las Vegas; it opened in 2001 and closed in 2003.

LACMA is already part of Local Access, which brings exhibitions from its collection to four Southern California institutions: Lancaster Museum of Art and History; Riverside Art Museum; Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College; and California State University, Northridge, Art Galleries.

“It dovetails with my philosophy at LACMA that we’re the largest museum in the Western United States and that part of our responsibility is to get our art, share it, and have a regional presence,” Govan said. “Museums don’t share enough. It’s an inefficient system. Most of museums’ collections are not shown.”

Wynn has been an important donor to LACMA. Govan enlisted her help in funding “Levitated Mass,” a 340-ton boulder by Heizer that traveled from the California desert to the museum in 2012. And she jump-started the fundraising campaign for the Los Angeles museum’s new building with a gift of $50 million in 2016.

Wynn is twice divorced from Steve Wynn, who resigned as chair and CEO his company, Wynn Resorts, in 2018 in response to sexual misconduct allegations. As a pair, the Wynns worked on a number of projects that transformed the Las Vegas Strip.

When they opened the Bellagio in 1998, they included an art gallery, which was advertised on the kind of marquee that would have once touted Rat Pack shows: “Coming soon: Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir and Cézanne. With special guests Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.” (Steve Wynn made headlines when he once accidentally punched his elbow through a Picasso he was planning to sell for more than $100 million. He sold much of his collection in 2018 at Christie’s, after resigning.)

Elaine Wynn is a prominent collector as well. She bought the Francis Bacon triptych of painter Lucian Freud for $142.5 million at Christie’s in 2013.

As for how much money she would contribute to the Las Vegas museum, Wynn said she would be the “angel donor,” giving an amount as necessary. She has been subsidizing the project’s operations already, including Harmon’s salary. The museum also received $5 million in seed funding from the Nevada Legislature in 2023.

Wynn said she did not see the museum as a future home for her own collection. But might her Bacons be shown there one day?

“There is no reason why they couldn’t,” she said. “We have the proper air-conditioning and insurance and everything that anybody else would want there for their collection.”