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Peter Max at The Art of Peter Max gallery in January.
Published Friday, Nov. 27, 2009 | 2:35 p.m.
Updated Friday, Nov. 27, 2009 | 11:27 p.m.
Portrait of Picasso for sale at the Peter Max gallery at the Forum Shops.
Sun Archives
- Strapped Las Vegas Art Museum plans to shutter (2-21-09)
- Las Vegas Art Museum closing next week (2-20-09)
- New, on display, from L.A. (12-12-2008)
- With Lumpkin’s exit, museum must be ‘creative’ to survive, interim director says (12-5-2008)
- Museum gift shop will be missed, but it’s gone for good reasons (12-3-2008)
Beyond the Sun
Peter Max has focused much of his recent work on living pop culture icons and nonliving master artists, but today he reiterated his interest in a Las Vegas art institution. The latent Las Vegas Art Museum, specifically, which went dark in February for lack of funding.
If there is anything Peter Max knows, aside from creating art, it’s how to make money to support art.
“For me, it’s sad for anybody to shut down,” Max said during a phone conversation today, referring to the dormant LVAM. “I would have pulled a few million dollars worth of art for free to help the museum. I would help reopen it in a heartbeat.”
Interesting. This all started about a month ago, when I contacted Max about his upcoming show at The Art of Peter Max Gallery in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace and asked if he’d heard of LVAM’s plight. He hadn’t but was fast to offer his assistance, at least in principal, to the struggling museum. Conveniently, Max is in town tomorrow, at his Forum Shops gallery from 2 to 4 p.m. to show off his new collection of acrylic-on-canvas paintings of the masters of Expressionism. Rembrandt, da Vinci, Van Gogh and Picasso are among the subjects on display and for sale. The 16-by-14 pieces are priced at $22,000 apiece.
As that $22,000-per-piece price tag reflects, Max is one of the most successful commercial artists ever, so it is not inconceivable that he would be able to generate a lot of money fairly quickly to help LVAM get back on its feet. Patrick Duffy, president of the LVAM Board of Trustees, said today that the board has formed an exploratory team to review the synergy between LVAM and UNLV, which might one day be home to a new, permanent LVAM space. As Duffy said, any fundraising effort of this scope would be turned over to the UNLV Foundation for review, but it is a tantalizing possibility.
“Something like this would have to be launched nationally rather than locally,” Duffy said. “Las Vegas has suffered through economic malaise probably more than any metropolitan area in the country.” Conceivably, as Duffy thought through the concept, Max could commission a couple of Las Vegas works, a modern-day Vegas piece (say, CityCenter) and another old Vegas work (say, Fremont Street back in the 1950s) and sell limited-edition prints and turn the profits from the sales of those prints over to LVAM. The museum could use the revenue as seed money for a new, permanent gallery.
“It’s really an interesting thought,” Duffy said, rolling the idea around in his head. “It’s a really thoughtful gesture from Peter Max, I’ll say that to him.” And in this unique artistic and economic relationship, it could work.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.
Jimmy Hendrix played Vegas
Hey, so did The Doors.
I really like Peter Max's work, but at $22K per piece, it's a little beyond my means. How about Peter doing some mixed media pieces at $1-2K a piece so that many more people can acquire one?
In Granada Hills Ca., my 7th grade Art teacher Mr. Hamil turned us on to the "Peter Max' Style" [some 36+yrs. ago]. Since then, whenever I see any art resembling the "Peter Max Style" with the Psycodelic Rainbow of Color's he uses and Crazy Design's, I would look at the bottom for the 'Peter Max' Signature. The 'Beatles' Yellow Sumbmarine' album cover remind's me Alot of "the'Peter Max' Style." Then I thought how nice it would be to have one of his painting's. Today I would still LOVE to own one. Butt, I don't think I could even afford the sales tax for one. 'Peter Max' was/is GREAT at something he must Truly Love doing. If only I could have such Great talent and Luck, [I wouldn't even look at the price tag], Id just buy it and hang it with a lable that read something like "!!!THANX!!! Peter and Mr. Hamil for showing me the many color's of the world."