The Las Vegas casinos, such as the Venetian owned by Miriam and Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn's future “Rêve”, are more than ever betting on art to attract more visitors.
Founded in 1931 by gangster Bugsy Siegel, Las Vegas is really the town of extravaganza with its casinos recreating big monuments of the world such as the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the pyramid of Cheops (The Louxor), the lake of Como (The Bellagio), the Grand Canal of Venice (The Venetian) or ancient Rome (The Caesar Palace).
There is nothing impossible to achieve in Vegas where promoters are constantly bustling with crazy ideas. For example, the “Venetian” houses two small museums based on the Guggenheim concept in Bilbao, which were inaugurated on October 7th 2001 and where visitors can admire splendid works by Kandinsky, Picasso, Cézanne, Chagall, Bonnard or Delaunay among others.
Visitors have also the opportunity of discovering works loaned for a year by the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg for an exhibition aimed at financing the rehabilitation of that institution.
Known as the gambling paradise, Vegas has progressively become one of the most important art compounds in the world and visitors of the Venetian are truly in ecstasies before dozens of masterpieces, perhaps a suitable way to forget for a while what they have lost while gambling with slot machines and poker games.
Sheldon Adelson said Vegas was a town in the middle of the desert thus deprived of an ocean and that it needed to change its philosophy so far based on casinos alone.
This self-made man, who was born into a poor Jewish family in Boston, added that he had many other projects in mind after spending $ 30 million to create the two museums with works rented by the Guggenheim.
The Las Vegas casinos, such as the Venetian owned by Miriam and Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn's future “Rêve”, are more than ever betting on art to attract more visitors.
Founded in 1931 by gangster Bugsy Siegel, Las Vegas is really the town of extravaganza with its casinos recreating big monuments of the world such as the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the pyramid of Cheops (The Louxor), the lake of Como (The Bellagio), the Grand Canal of Venice (The Venetian) or ancient Rome (The Caesar Palace).
There is nothing impossible to achieve in Vegas where promoters are constantly bustling with crazy ideas. For example, the “Venetian” houses two small museums based on the Guggenheim concept in Bilbao, which were inaugurated on October 7th 2001 and where visitors can admire splendid works by Kandinsky, Picasso, Cézanne, Chagall, Bonnard or Delaunay among others.
Visitors have also the opportunity of discovering works loaned for a year by the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg for an exhibition aimed at financing the rehabilitation of that institution.
Known as the gambling paradise, Vegas has progressively become one of the most important art compounds in the world and visitors of the Venetian are truly in ecstasies before dozens of masterpieces, perhaps a suitable way to forget for a while what they have lost while gambling with slot machines and poker games.
Sheldon Adelson said Vegas was a town in the middle of the desert thus deprived of an ocean and that it needed to change its philosophy so far based on casinos alone.
This self-made man, who was born into a poor Jewish family in Boston, added that he had many other projects in mind after spending $ 30 million to create the two museums with works rented by the Guggenheim.
Vegas is attracting over 36 million visitors a year while casino owners have been rivalling over new ambitious projects, notably those based on art, in order to captivate and entertain people who might have finally found that going on a shopping spree was rather boring.
Steve Wynn, the other Vegas magnate, was the first to introduce art in his casino The Bellagio filled with Picasso works. At 59, this buoyant entrepreneur who studied at the Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania, first created the “Mirage” in Vegas with an erupting volcano erected as a façade and Captain Hook's sloop anchored in front of a dazzling reproduction of Treasure Island. He then founded the Bellagio but faced problems a year ago and was forced to sell his casino to Kirk Kerkorian, his rival and head of MGM Grand Inc.
Wynn, who hates to be a loser, has however managed to get back on his feet after being deprived of his fabulous collection of art works estimated at $ 400 million. His silhouette was no longer seen at Christie's or Sotheby's during many months while he had been forced to sell Rembrandt's portrait of a bearded man with a red cloak (bought for $ 9,1 million at Sotheby's in January 1998) at Christie's last year for $ 12,65 million.
At the same time, the new owners of the Bellagio sold in turn part of Wynn's former collection, notably a work by Berthe Morisot (Partie de cache-cache sold for a record $ 4,4 million) and Modigliani's portrait of Paul Guillaume (sold for $ 4,6 million).
Now, more active than ever, he is in the process of building his new casino called “Le Rêve” at a cost of $ 2 billion and limits himself to showing 13 art works in the “Wynn Collection” setting at the moment. “Le Rêve” has notably been named after Picasso's portrait of Thérèse Walter painted in 1932 (bought by a wealthy collector for $ 48,4 million in November 1997 at Christie's) bearing this title.
Wynn managed to acquire this famous painting last June after selling his Picasso portrait of Dora Maar with a striped blouse to gather the money needed for it.
He now plans to exhibit works by Andy Warhol, notably the “Flowers” series, in “Le Rêve” and to become once again the undisputed number one art collector of Vegas, a position that would probably prove to be a good way to mix business with sheer pleasure.
However Vegas' future has been in the balance after the U.S was hit by the repercussions of the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The town has recorded a drop of 60% in the expected number of visitors during the last quarter of 2001 and is desperately trying to get business restarted.
Will all the art treasures that are displayed in this desert town be enough to induce gamblers to come back again to Las Vegas? That's another story but one of these days, one would not be surprised if Christie's and Sotheby's decided to inaugurate their own casinos there since art collectors are themselves often acting as true gamblers.
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