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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, June 20, 2004

Enjoy the fine art during break in gambling

By Jennifer Hiller
Special to The Advertiser

We went to Las Vegas, as so many do, to gamble and stay up until all hours of the night, shunning sunlight and healthy food and anything resembling a regular lifestyle. We wanted Elvis impersonators. We wanted rhinestones. We wanted all-you-can-eat buffets, although, to be entirely honest, we really didn't need to eat all we could. We wanted to see obnoxiously large hotels, with chandeliers larger than our house. In short, we wanted Vegas at its most Vegas-y.

So when I tugged my companion's arm in the monstrous Bellagio Casino, and pointed to a sign that led to the art museum, he understandably balked. "We're in a casino," he said. "This is Vegas. You can't be serious."

I was serious.

At the same time that the city's ad campaign has been extolling, possibly even encouraging, sin and debauchery ("What happens here, stays here"), the Las Vegas Strip has taken a leap into the world of high art. Three galleries — all tucked inside casinos — are displaying renowned art collections.

For the cost of a few losing hands of blackjack, you can visit the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian, which displays 37 masterworks from Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Mark Rothko and others. The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art has 21 works by Claude Monet on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Art, which holds the most extensive Monet collection outside France. A wing of the former Desert Inn displays the Wynn Collection of Fine Art, an assortment of American 19th-and 20th-century pieces owned by casino developer Steve Wynn.

The Monet exhibit in particular has elicited a few snickers, some doubters and a fair amount of outrage from the art world. Art historians are spinning over a decision by the Boston museum to "rent" half of its excellent Monet collection to the Bellagio for $1 million. Others have sniffed down their noses at the idea of tennis shoe-clad casino tourists shelling out cash to see the art, as if it were a carnival ride to be taken.

If you go ...

Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art

"Monet: Masterworks from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston" (Through Sept. 13)

Cost: $15

Hours: 9 a.m.- 9 p.m.

www.bgfa.biz

(877) 957-9777

Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian

"A Century of Painting from Renoir to Rothko" (through July 5)

Cost: $15 (Discount coupon available online or at the hotel) Children younger than 6 free.

Hours: 9:30 a.m.- 8:30 p.m.

(866) 484-4849

Wynn Collection of Fine Art

Cost: $10; $6 for children ages 6-12

Open: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (702) 733-4100

They've all raised the question: Can you experience real art in a city that specializes in the spectacle of fake Eiffel Tours and replicas of the Grand Canal? I decided to try.

My companion was a skeptic. But he was a skeptic on a losing streak. He needed a good excuse to cash in his chips and take a break from the cigarette-smoke clouds hanging in the casinos. Our friends eagerly rushed to the next blackjack table. "You're going to an art museum?" they asked us. "Here?" We nodded. They looked impressed. We seemed cultured, even intellectual. (It's easy to appear intellectual in Vegas).

Our priorities were set: art first, buffet later.

At the Bellagio, the mesmerizing "Water Lilies" was worth the steep $15 price of admission itself. Other well-known pieces such as "Japanese Foot Bridge" are also on display, and many will appear familiar even to the most casual of art observers. One room has two of Monet's "Rouen Cathedral" series hanging side by side so you can see how the artist painted the building in different light. An audio tour ushers you through the exhibit. To linger longer, go early in the morning or late in the evening to avoid the afternoon crush of visitors.

The Guggenheim exhibition begins with Renoir's 1871 "Woman with Parrot" and ends with Robert Motherwell's 1971 "Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110." It allows you to trace the development of modern art, moving easily from one period to the next and noting the connections between artists and the way their work developed in concert with each other. The docents at the Guggenheim gladly explained some of the more inscrutable works of the most modern art. Again, audio tours and brochures helped tell the stories behind the art.

The Wynn collection at the former Desert Inn is a good but small collection that includes pieces by American artists such as Andy Warhol and Europeans like Henri Matisse. The centerpiece is "Le Reve" by Picasso — a painting of his mistress. The collection will be in place until Wynn's new hotel opens in 2005, at which time it will move there. Wynn's voice provides the audio to accompany your tour.

None of the galleries felt the same as browsing the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Prado in Madrid. The was no religious, reverent feel to entering the spaces, possibly because of the relatively small number of paintings on display. (Or possibly because my companion kept calculating how much we were paying per painting for the viewings). But the galleries were graceful, relaxing and quiet. Even peaceful — a rare find in Las Vegas.

The galleries themselves aren't worth a trip to Vegas, but if you're already there and you want to see something different, they're worth the time. I thought the art collections were an accomplishment for a city that has taken so much criticism for its lack of high culture. The most disconcerting thing about visiting the galleries was walking out of them, taking off the audio headphones and finding myself back in — surprise — a casino.

My companion, who is no art lover, declared the exhibitions much better than losing money at the tables. A masterwork on display in Vegas is still, after all, a masterwork.