Sheldon Adelson once tried to put an art museum in his Monte Carlo – the Vegas casino-hotel called The Venetian – and it was a bad idea from the start. Given Adelson’s rep as a smart investor, his failed Guggenheim Vegas was unexpected. .
There were a lot of signs forecasting failure that Adelson missed. You could see them at the grand opening. Several prominent members of the American art museum communitydidn’t show up. Many of them told me later that Guggenheim Vegas embodied everything that’s wrong with art museums today: cheeky architecture, elevation of popular culture over fine art, homage to box office rather than scholarship, style over substance.
Guggenheim Las Vegas fit that mold. The museum space, located between the casino and the parking garage, was a soaring 70-foot-high, stark, steel-wall lean-to designed by ascetic architect Rem Koolhaas for large-scale contemporary sculpture, additionally cut to bedazzling ribbons by Frank Gehry’s signature rolling stainless steel work.
The first show, 130 motorcycles, was the last because attendance was so poor. When the bikes shown previously in New York’s Guggenheim, many questioned whether the assemblage of motorcycles warranted an art museum exhibit.
Leading art museum directors were also on record opposing the use of what they view as gimmicky shows to draw crowds. Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Philippe de Montebello’s criticism of the Guggenheim’s ways and means was well known. He said the Guggenheim approach was about making money, not making museums. Glen Lowry, director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, called the bike show “an act of desperation.”
Considering the known values of the New York Guggenheim, some things were missing at Guggenheim Vegas. The New York museum established four goals when it began in 1937:collect, present, interpret and preserve. Guggenheim Vegas didn’t collect, interpret or preserve. It only presented. Fulfilling only one out of four of the Guggenheim’s avowed goals did not a Guggenheim make.
Clearly aware pf the criticism, Guggenheim Museum director at the time, Thomas Krens, told the Las Vegas audience at the opening. “Culture in 2001 is more complex than painting and sculpture. It’s about film, video, performance art, and architecture. And the motorcycle show is like a retrospective of a major artist.”
The problem was that the Venetian’s lavishly appointed gambling rooms looked more like a treasure house than did Guggenheim Vegas. Surrounded by the casino’s insistent garishness, the stark museum space seemed downright skeletal.
Architect Koolhaas also tried to explain his work at the opening: “The whole world has become a casino…we wanted to be part of that, to get away from solemnity.”
But just the opposite occurred. The stark steel walls seemed the antithesis of a casino. Koolhaas had an answer for that, too. He said the steel walls signified “a strongbox for art.”
But was the bike show really art? Guggenheim curator Ultan Guilfoyle didn’t call the bikes “art” exactly. As he put it to me, “It’s not art in the way Picasso is art. But it’s perfectly legitimate for a museum to mount a design show,” he said, hastily adding, “This is no ordinary design show. I could have done the popular thing and mounted Harleys. But I didn’t want to be seduced by what is popular. I went for purity and picked the best 100 I could find.” Guilfoyle considered his picks “sculpture.”
Maybe the bike show made sense in Vegas. But lay visitors weren’t buying it. Apparently they didn’t come to Vegas to see a “strongbox for art.”
No sad songs for Adelson, though. The demise of Guggenheim Vegas wasn’t a complete disaster for him. He still had his casino-hotel. He could still use the 70-foot-tall space for, say, a second baccarat pit. Gold-flocked wallpaper should take care of the steel walls.
The lesson from this story for Adelson, who is now betting on Gingrich, is not about museums, but about a badly thought out bet. Maybe he should stick to roulette.
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