Construction of the Las Vegas Museum of Art will begin in February 2027. The Los Angeles LACMA annex will be built in the central Las Vegas, Nevada district. A fundraising campaign is underway to finance the museum’s construction cost of $150 million.
The Las Vegas Museum of Art, located in Symphonik Park, will be adjacent to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts and the Discovery Children’s Museum. The new building, designed by Kéré Architecture, will have a surface area of 8,000 m2. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré has imagined an organic architecture that recalls the desert environment with warm colors and textures that evoke sand. The museum, located on a large redeveloped square, will offer two exhibition spaces and a sculpture park.
The Las Vegas Museum of Art was made possible by a partnership between Elaine Wynn, an 82-year-old billionaire casino magnate and Lacma’s major donor, and Michael Govan, Lacma’s director. The city of Las Vegas agreed to donate 3.5 acres for $1 million to build the new venue.
The Lacma branch, which will have its own director, Heather Harmon, will not have a collection: it will organize temporary exhibitions and events. The objects on display will be loans from the collections of the Lacma in Los Angeles. The Las Vegas Museum of Art is not a place dedicated to the collection of the billionaire who sits on the Lacma board of directors, but it could become one. “My days are numbered (…) We have air conditioning, insurance and everything that is necessary for a collection”explains Elaine Wynn for the New York Times.
While some are happy that the city of casinos finally has an art museum worthy of the name, the expansion of the Lacma and the relocation of part of its collections to Las Vegas have disappointed some in Los Angeles. Art critic Christopher Knight regrets that part of the museum’s collections located in Los Angeles are being relocated to Nevada: “It’s like NASA sending a man to the moon”he says ironically in an article in Los Angeles TimesLacma had recently invested $720 million in a new, larger building in Los Angeles, the David Geffen galleries, built specifically to house its vast collections.
