Will Las Vegas finally get an art museum? Collector Elaine Wynn and Lacma back new $150m institution

Around three years after the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) in Reno suspended its plans to move forward with a Las Vegas branch of the museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the foundation of the philanthropist Elaine P. Wynn have announced an unprecedented partnership to launch a new museum in the city called the Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA).The museum, scheduled to open in 2028, will cost an estimated $150m and span between 60,000 and 90,000 sq. ft. across three floors. Earlier this month, Las Vegas council approved negotiations to dedicate a parcel of land for the Las Vegas Museum of Art in Symphony Park, a five-acre arts hub in downtown Las Vegas that houses the Smith Center for the Performing Arts and other cultural centres.A spokeswoman for LACMA tells The Art Newspaper that it looks forward to the collaboration, although LVMA will operate as an independent institution with its own board of trustees, funding and executive leadership. “LACMA will help with the development of the museum by sharing professional expertise in the short term, and then with exhibitions and artworks on loan,” the spokeswoman adds.“Our efforts to work with local and regional museums to share our collections and programmes to larger and more diverse audiences are a priority in this joint effort,” she says. “Las Vegas is currently the only city among the 30 largest in the US to lack a standalone art museum [that is not a member of American Alliance of Museums]. It promises to be a valuable addition to the city and the cultural landscape of the region.”The philanthropist Elaine Wynn, the mega-collector who co-founded Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts with her ex-husband, the collector and former casino magnate Steve Wynn, is the co-chair of the board of LACMA. She serves on several other executive boards related to arts and education and has made significant contributions to other centres in Symphony Park and the wider Las Vegas Valley.Within the next six months, organisers are expected to present an initial fundraising outline, and will deliver a design proposal by 2025. The project has received $5m from the state of Nevada in seed funding so far, and will be realised with a combination of state, municipal, private and congressional funding.Heather Harmon, a representative for the forthcoming project, previously served as the deputy director of the scrapped Las Vegas branch of the NMA, an estimated $250m project launched in 2017 and cancelled in 2020 due to insufficient funding. A spokeswoman for the NMA confirms that it has no involvement with the forthcoming museum.“The long and dedicated development of museums in Las Vegas includes a number of efforts—it’s a continuum,” Harmon says. “It’s not that the project has now changed hands, but that the project has been reinvigorated and galvanised by the timing of everything else that is happening in Las Vegas. The city has accomplished some enormous feats.”Las Vegas has seen a meteoric economic spike since the pandemic, with visitor spending reaching a record $80bn in 2022, a 25% increase from the previous record in 2019. Several major art commissions have opened throughout the city; the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, for example, opened earlier this month with a monumental 46 ft-tall work by Urs Fischer and other offerings spread across the resort. The Brightline West, a $13bn high-speed rail project connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas that is slated to open in 2027, is also expected to greatly impact the Vegas Valley.