Guggenheim to open on gaudy Vegas strip

The smaller gallery, the 7,660-square-foot Hermitage Guggenheim Museum, will feature 20 works from the Russian museum and 20 from the Guggenheim that will rotate every six months. It is set to open in spring 2001.

For larger displays, plans call for the 63,700-square-foot Guggenheim Las Vegas to be built between the hotel's casino and the parking garage for large-scale traveling exhibitions. It is scheduled to open in summer 2001.

That gallery's inaugural exhibition will be "The Art of the Motorcycle" that opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1998, said Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The smaller gallery's first exhibit is scheduled to be 40 works representing Impressionism, post-Impressionism and early Modernist works drawn from the Hermitage and Guggenheim collections.

Because about 35 million people visit Las Vegas each year, it is easier to bring art to them than holding hundreds of exhibits across the country, said Venetian Chairman Sheldon Adelson.

"By collaborating with the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums, The Venetian will bring some of the greatest masterpieces ever created to a city that is rapidly being transformed into a world-class travel destination," Adelson said Friday. "Now we can add art to the capital of entertainment."

The significance of the Hermitage-Guggenheim Museum is exceptional for Russian-American cultural relations, said Dr. Mikhail Shwydkoi, minister of culture of the Russian Federation.

"This is a very humanistic project," he said, adding he hopes it will become "the new face of Las Vegas."

The center would be the sixth Guggenheim branch in the world, joining branches in New York, Berlin, Venice, and Bilbao, Spain. The State Hermitage museum of St. Petersburg, Russia, has origins dating from the 1750s.

The Venetian gallery is a continuation of an art trend started on the Strip by Steve Wynn and Mirage Resorts Inc., which opened the Bellagio with its fine art gallery in 1998.

"I'm delighted to be a catalyst," said Wynn, who added he has been contemplating publicly displaying his extensive private collection again.

The Guggenheim and the Hermitage will join the Phillips Collection of Washington, D.C., which now has a temporary display at the Bellagio's Gallery of Fine Art.

"This is fundamental change," said the mega-resort developer and owner of the Desert Inn hotel-casino. "This is not going to go away."

Rob Goldstein, Venetian president, would not reveal the price tag for the venture, although ticket prices are anticipated at $15 a head with discounts for senior citizens. Children would enter free.

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