CULTURE:

Las Vegas Art Museum closing next week

Museum officials hope to reopen when economy turns around

Steve Marcus

“Smoke Signal, Rope Umbilical” is acrylic on canvas by Wendell Gladstone that is part of “L.A. Now,” an exhibit of emerging artists’ work that opened in December at the Las Vegas Art Museum.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Friday, Feb. 20, 2009 | 5:20 p.m.

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Las Vegas Art Museum

The Las Vegas Art Museum is closing its doors.

The museum will close Feb. 28. Staff and board members say the museum will remain an entity and keep its name so that it can possibly reemerge when the economy improves. Members and docents were notified this afternoon.

“We’ve tried everything to keep this afloat. It’s just a challenging time,” says Patrick Duffy, president to the museum’s board. “The economic climate has eliminated several of our donations and or reduced them significantly.”

The decision comes less than three months after executive director Libby Lumpkin resigned because the board announced that budget cuts would affect salaries and result in possible layoffs.

Lumpkin joined the museum in 2005 and with the board took the institution from a community art center to a contemporary art museum, featuring exhibits that included “Southern California Minimalism,” including work by Robert Irwin, John McCracken and James Turrell; a Frank Gehry exhibit; and “Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland.”

“Las Vegas Diaspora” featured the work of artists who had studied at UNLV with Dave Hickey.

It’s current exhibit “L.A. Now,” curated by art critic David Pagel, features work by Los Angeles contemporary artists.

The museum formed 59 years ago as an art league. In 1974 it became a fine art museum and in 1997 it moved into the Sahara West Library on 9600 W. Sahara Ave.

Discussion: 3 comments so far…

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By revbobdobbs

Feb. 21, 2009

7:23 a.m.

Suggest removal

Which shows us, once again, what a great place Las Vegas is to live in.
By SR702

Feb. 21, 2009

9:28 p.m.

Suggest removal

This is really sad, but I think it's fairly realistic. Besides "Las Vegas" doesn't make decisions for us, we are the constituents, if we had been frequenting the museum and funding it abundantly they wouldn't be closing their doors right?
By TheGreatestLasVegas

Feb. 24, 2009

12:33 p.m.

Suggest removal

My experience with the arts organizations, such as a the ballet, art museum, is there "street" marketing to the masses, was all but non existent. In Vegas' transitory population out reach, brand identity building, web presence building, media events all seemed below the "Ivy tower or civil servant mentality of these organizations. In New York & LA, you see banners, for arts organizations everywhere, store windows, t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, the same is needed here. I tried to bring these "Low brow" methods used in New york and LA here, which worked for ages to develop major theater companies etc. Arts marketing as Andy Warhol did, is a mass art, and that is what I see as the major reason, lack of "will" to reach out on the media and street level. Frank Gehry exhibit at the museum, yet, TV interviews, media push was weak. Certainly curators need to decide the art in the shows, but media marketing needs gutsy, daring, even edgy low art, Warhol style hucksters to make it work. Hundreds of small mini malls, could have displayed banners, posters etc, reaching the "masses" for example, "Get to the street level, the people and inform them". Newspapers as we all know is only able to reach a small percentage of people. T-shirts alone if boldly designed, could be used in thousands of ways to reach kids, parents etc, even tourists would have bought them "Las Vegas" brand name products. You can see an example of a proposed marketing campaign and products at my web site:

http://www.lasvegasARThelp.com

It works, but sadly the arts organizations in Vegas are terrified of their "Ivory tower" yet the answers are there, I have a whole series of them in marketing that work. Certainly other factors play a part in the demise of the museum, but this was one problem, reaching the "poor people" of Las Vegas, that was not addressed using NYC "street level marketing".