About three years after the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) in Reno suspended plans to move forward with a branch museum in Las Vegas, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the philanthropist foundation Elaine P. Wynn announced an unprecedented partnership to launch a new museum in the city called the Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA).
The museum, slated to open in 2028, will cost about $150 million and span 60,000 to 90,000 square feet over three floors. Earlier this month, the Las Vegas City Council approved negotiations to dedicate a parcel of land to the Las Vegas Museum of Art at Symphony Park, a five-acre arts center in downtown Las Vegas that is home to the Smith Center for the Performing Arts and other cultural centers.
A LACMA spokeswoman said The Journal of Art that collaboration awaits, although LVMA will operate as an independent institution with its own board of directors, funding and executive leadership. “LACMA will help the development of the museum by sharing professional knowledge in the short term, and then with exhibitions and works of art on loan,” adds the spokeswoman.
“Our efforts to work with local and regional museums to share our collections and programs with broader 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 United States that lacks an independent 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”.
Philanthropist Elaine Wynn, the mega-collector who co-founded Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts with her ex-husband, collector and former casino mogul Steve Wynn, is the co-chair of LACMA’s board of directors. He serves on other executive boards related to the arts and education and has made significant contributions to other centers in Symphony Park and the Las Vegas Valley.
Within the next six months, organizers are expected to come up with an initial fundraising scheme and deliver a design proposal for 2025. The project has received $5 million from the state of Nevada so far in seed funding, and will be carried out with a combination of state, municipal, private and Congress.
Heather Harmon, representative of the upcoming project, previously served as deputy director of the defunct Las Vegas branch of the NMA, an estimated $250 million project launched in 2017 and canceled in 2020 due to insufficient funding. A spokeswoman for the NMA confirms that it has no connection with the upcoming museum.
“The long and dedicated development of Las Vegas museums includes a number of efforts, it’s a continuum,” says Harmon. “It’s not that the project has now changed hands, but that the project has been revitalized and galvanized by the moment of everything that is happening in Las Vegas. The city has achieved some huge feats.”
Las Vegas has experienced a meteoric economic rebound since the pandemic, with visitor spending reaching a record $80 billion in 2022, a 25% increase from the previous record in 2019. Several major art commissions have opened across the city ; the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, for example, opened earlier this month with a monumental 46-foot-tall work by Urs Fischer and other offerings dotted around the resort. The Brightline West, a $13 billion high-speed rail project connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas that is scheduled to open in 2027, is also expected to have a major impact on the Vegas Valley.
