Columnist Susan Snyder: An artful dodger misses her chance

Saturday, Dec. 2, 2000 | 10:31 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

I always meant to get down to one of the Smallworks Gallery's openings.

Was invited to them, but never went. I was too busy.

There were out-of-town visitors to entertain one of the nights, I think. And I'm sure there were a couple of happy hours with co-workers that I simply couldn't miss.

Besides, they probably wouldn't have had anything I could afford anyway. Of course, I never went to find out.

But now none of us will get a chance to see what we missed -- at least if we hoped to visit the gallery and its Lost Vegas gift shop at the Arts Factory downtown.

Smallworks closed, with its last exhibit Nov. 25. I didn't find out by finally going down there to check it out, but by reading a letter sent with the invitation to its final opening.

An invitation I opened too late to attend.

"We are currently looking for a more suitable location; in the meantime we will continue as art dealers while expanding our online gallery smallworksgallery.com," the letter says.

It promises that Smallworks will host future exhibits in surprise locations and it thanked me for my support, even though I never gave it any.

City officials are babbling about downtown revitalization and that ridiculous Neonopolis project. But it's like grandstanding inside a food bank while starving people die on the sidewalk because the front door is locked.

In October our town's Important People were all a-twitter over the Hermitage-Guggenheim Foundation's announcement of plans to open two museums at the Venetian.

The first, a 7,660-square-foot hall inside the hotel, opens in February and will be suitable for exhibits such as Faberge eggs and Picasso's early works.

Call me a killjoy, but if Picasso were alive today I bet he would rather Las Vegas' 35 million annual visitors bought some local art.

The Guggenheim's other museum will be a freestanding 63,700-square-foot building for large-scale traveling exhibits. Las Vegas' art seems destined to blow into town and blow out again, just like its visitors.

What's pathetic is people who have the money to decide what lives and dies here honestly think they're encouraging art by adding another attraction on the midway.

"Now we can add art to the capital of entertainment," Venetian Chairman Sheldon Adelson said in reports published in October.

No, we're adding another facade. In reality "the capital of entertainment" just lost more of its art. And many of us are to blame.

Art isn't something that hangs on the wall or sits in the yard. It's a living thing with ideas and passions. It needs people and attention to survive. If we want art in Las Vegas we have to support it.

Buy art. And if you can't buy it, at least go look at it.

There still are fine exhibits down at the Arts Factory. Studio X on the ground floor is showing two Las Vegas painters through December. And as its name suggests, art is being created in addition to being displayed inside the building at Charleston Boulevard and Main Street. Check it out.

I always meant to.

But I was too busy.