Columnist Tom Gorman: Watching to see if Wynn art gallery closes shop

Friday, Oct. 21, 2005 | 8:08 a.m.

Tom Gorman's column runs Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 259-2310 or tom.gorman@lasvegassun.com.

It's his hotel, so he'll do what he wants.

But it'll be a crying shame if Steve Wynn closes his art gallery at Wynn Las Vegas just so he can make room for a store that sells really nice watches.

Wynn hasn't said anything yet, and his spokesfolks are being coy, but here's the word among his rank-and-file gallery workers: Wynn wants to expand a lobby that, with its own entrance and staff, serves his VIP guests.

But to expand it, according to one of his trusty employees, Wynn is going to have to move some of his high-end gift stores, including the watch shop. So the Wynn Collection, a place of storied, timeless masterpieces, may turn into just a store for timepieces.

I'd be surprised, though, if Wynn altogether crates up and carts away his art collection.

There are, for starters, financial considerations: Even if the gallery is too small to draw that many people (there were only 12 pieces hanging there this week), the fact that he's making them available for public viewing gives him some big tax breaks when he wheels and deals in the art world.

More importantly, I really think Wynn is dedicated to sharing art, of giving the unwashed masses access to the masterpieces.

That was his premise when Wynn opened Bellagio in 1998, a breakthrough with its Gallery of Fine Art, which featured a jaw-dropping inventory of masterworks. The art world was aghast. What genius -- or crass marketing -- for Wynn to combine Renoir and roulette, Picassos and progressives.

Indeed, the phrases "Las Vegas" and "fine art" were something of an oxymoron at the time. We now saw art patrons wearing Betty Boop T-shirts and "Vegas, Baby!" baseball caps traipsing through the halls of high art.

Wynn has said over and over again that was his intention: to make fine art more accessible.

And unlike a politician, I think he's been good to his word. He even emboldened Sheldon Adelson at the Venetian to bring New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, Russia, to the Strip, to mixed results.

When Wynn left Bellagio and his other hotels five years ago and struck out on his own, he hung the paintings he personally owned in a temporary gallery at the Desert Inn, which he was dismantling to make room for his current hotel.

"Nobody owns this stuff," Wynn told me at the time, just after he acquired Pablo Picasso's surreal, erotic "Le Reve." "You just have custody. The pictures are bigger than us, and we're just the guardians. You can't say 'mine' like you do your house or land."

In one of his gallery books, Wynn inscribed this message for my wife: "Jeanne, We both are enjoying the art. I am glad for both of us."

I interpreted his comment to mean that he intended to share the art with those of us who otherwise were unlikely to ever see it.

The question now, I think, is what will Wynn do with his art?

The obvious guess is that he'll hang the collection in his enlarged VIP lobby. He'll first want to head over to Aaron Brothers for some really strong wire, picture hangars and dry-wall anchors, and to Lamps Plus for some really nifty track lighting.

Or he could surprise us all and hang the paintings in the service bays of the Ferrari-Maserati dealership at his hotel. I've looked through the window, and it's a really clean shop, and brightly lighted too.

If Wynn decides to take his paintings home and hang them in the foyer or the hallway, I'm hoping he and wife Elaine will at least invite us to their holiday open house.

We would reciprocate, of course, because we keep tit-for-tat score. And I'm sure the Wynns would come, if just to see our collections from Pier 1 and Costco.