Casino Connection Nevada

Vegas and fine art, perfect together?

by Steve Friess

In early March, I broke a major exclusive that MGM Mirage is investing $40 million into an ambitious public art program at CityCenter. This is a very, very big deal for a few reasons. To start with, the artists involved are the Elvises (Elvi?) of their  worlds. None is more amazing than Maya Lin, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial sculptress. She’s creating a $3 million, 133-foot cast-silver representation of the Colorado River. Some pieces are being created, others are being acquired. Among the artists is Jenny Holzer, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, Henry Moore, Richard Long and Nancy Rubins. (Don’t worry; I wasn’t that familiar with all of them either before I caught wind of this story. But they’re big.) But the big deal here is that this plan has the potential to kick off an arts arms race in Las Vegas that really could turn the town into a destination for cultural tourists. Sure, we’ve had small Strip museums—Bellagio and Venetian and, before he realized Rolexes provide better profits, Wynn Las Vegas—but those are one aspect.

Now we can expect every new, upscale development to do something similar just to keep up, with Fountainbleau and Echelon already working on it. And consider that art critic Joan Altabe, who I had quoted in a piece in the New York Times in 2003 railing against putting great art in a city where everything is so fake, was very impressed: “This is going to put Vegas on the map in a totally different way. Someone with an art mind is working here.... It’s a step away from what I thought was a failing idea.”