LAS VEGAS — This is a true story.
I'm in the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas. I'm walking corridors parqueted with multicolored marble, craning up at pillars and ceilings bursting with almost-adequate faux-Renaissance art. I window shop along a fake Grand Canal and sip a cocktail in a mock St. Mark's Square — sans cathedral and sans pigeons.
I am drowning in Vegas-style ersatz art — albeit a step up from Caesars Palace and its animatronic Cellini fountains — when I turn into a quiet entry room as out of whack here as a slot machine would be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
But this is what I have found: a real art museum. An oasis of culture among desert dunes of kitsch.
Forget the lounge acts and the scantily clad cocktail waitresses. The latest reason to head to the nation's gambling mecca is to do a fine-art museum tour.
That's right. Fine art. Paintings you see in those coffee-table books or studied in art appreciation classes. Great works culled from collections seldom seen in America, let alone in a town where there are two "museums" dedicated to Elvis Presley.
Vegas is gambling a fortune on fine art — albeit boutique collections — and the result is a must-see smattering of world-class examples nestled in specially designed locations at three venues on the Strip.
True, as art critic Robert Hughes pointed out, Las Vegas is a city where "art" is still likely to be the name of your limousine driver. The difference in current Vegas art collections, however, is that they offer a chance to see works borrowed from museums you may never visit — like the Hermitage in Russia — or an opportunity to see well-displayed examples of such wonders as jeweled eggs crafted by Faberge.
Mix the Picassos, Matisses and Chagalls with some honky-tonk "museums" offering still-sparkling Liberace costumes, replicas of King Tut's tomb and Elvis' 1995 Cadillac limo, and you've got more to do here than sit around and lose at keno.
Oh, sure, the lions still roam at the MGM Grand, the pirates battle at Treasure Island, the volcano erupts at the Mirage. Those shows are circuses for the masses that clog the Strip, shuffling from one casino experience to another. The high-end hoteliers are laying odds that art follows money and people will pay hefty entry fees to view masterworks and claim they've found culture.
But is culture why we come to Vegas?
This is more of the same true story at the Venetian.
I've gone into the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas to see 20 impressionist and early modern paintings from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
I'm standing in front of Picasso's "Three Women" (1908) when a couple show up. They've obviously wandered into the museum inside the casino between bouts at the gaming tables. I think, from their rather sluggish demeanor, they've not been breaking the bank.
"You need to take a break," I overhear her say to the guy. "I know," he says, "I'm too intense today."
He looks up. He sees the Picasso. "Wow," he says. "That's nuts."
So, OK, everyone isn't going to appreciate fine art.
But for those who do:
The first stop on any Vegas art tour has got to be the Bellagio Hotel. This hotel is Steve Wynn's signature statement — at least until he opens his new Le Reve experience on the site of the old Desert Inn.
Wynn, who suffers from advanced retinitis pigmentosa, which has left him with restricted vision, amassed an art collection valued at $400 million before the hotel was sold to MGM Grand. Insiders say Wynn really appreciates art, even if he can't see all of it. Others snort that he just wants to give people something to do besides gamble and that he focused on art after he discovered that more people go to museums than to sports events.
Be that as it may. The winner this time is the public.
Bellagio, built at a cost of $1.6 billion, sets an artistic tone for the Strip with its fountains choreographed to opera as well as Sinatra. In the lobby, take time to look at the ceiling, a display of 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers created by artist Dale Chihuly. (Yes, you can buy Chihuly pieces at the Chihuly Gallery or you can just enjoy the effect for free.) Just beyond the lobby is the Conservatory and Botanical Gardens — and I defy you to find a more stunning display of plants and flowers anywhere.
Soak your senses before seeking out the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art. Ignore the ching-a-chings and whoop-whoops of the casino. You are about to see the "Moscow Kremlin Egg," the tallest and most ambitious of the imperial Easter eggs, made of gold, silver, onyx and enamel and presented to Czarina Alexandra by Czar Nicholas II for Easter 1906. The Czarina said it was her favorite.
The egg represents the Uspensky Cathedral, complete with two working clocks and chimes. When wound with its gold key — no, they won't wind it for you — the egg plays Easter hymns. And through the windows of the egg, you can see a reproduction of the cathedral interior, including carpets, decorations and the high altar.
There are two other imperial Easter eggs, Faberge jewelry and liturgical objects, cigarette cases, figurines and even Emperor Nicholas II's coronation uniform.
Here's the best part: You're getting a better view of these Russian treasures than you'd get in Russia. When I visited museums in Moscow a decade ago, the glass shelves were dusty, the lights were low and the displays were antiquated.
Seeing the Faberge eggs alone is worth a trip to Vegas, but there's more. Among the intimate collection are two examples of Faberge flowers, measuring about 4 inches tall each. These miniature masterpieces are extremely fragile and rarely set out for view.
But you say you're more of a muscle guy? Then walk across the street to the Venetian, where "The Art of the Motorcycle" nuzzles against a reproduction of the Doge's Palace and a parking structure.
Motorcycles aren't my thing, but the Guggenheim Las Vegas has more than 125 on display, an exhibition chronicling what it labels "compelling" moments in motorcycle design and technology. Motorcycles, say the motorcycle art experts (I never knew such people existed), are the quintessential symbol of the modern age. This exhibit displays steam-powered bikes of yesteryear along with seven never-before-seen motorcycles: the American-made Copeland Steam (1884), the Opel Motorclub SS500 (1929), the Italian Aermacchi Chimera (1958) and the contemporary Montesa/HRC 315RY (2001).
What makes viewing these motorcycles exciting is the venue.
The exhibition is the first in a new 63,700-square-foot hall designed by Dutch architect Ren Koolhaas, winner of the 2000 Pritzker Prize. The installation was designed by architect Frank Gehry.
Also at the Venetian, in the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, is an exhibition of 40 masterpieces from the Renaissance to the 1960s, the second exhibit in this intimate art gallery, the one off the pillared and marbled hallway.
Artwork comes from the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.
I'm particularly fond of this gallery. I like the ambiance, the reflective environment.
Works on display begin with a 15th-century portrait by Jan van Eyck and continue through Jackson Pollock and pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. This is a gem of a collection tracing the history of Western art and worth an hour or two away from the gaming tables.
Finally, there's Steve Wynn's original collection, the one first showcased at the Bellagio.
Wynn has put several works from his private collection on display in a gallery inside the Wynn Resorts building where the old Desert Inn Hotel once stood. Wynn says he's spending $2.5 billion on a new hotel and casino, Le Reve, slated to open in 2004.
The focus of the collection is Picasso's 1932 painting "Le Reve (The Dream)," the inspiration for the hotel. Wynn bought the painting, a portrait of Picasso mistress Marie-Therese Walter, a year ago. He won't say what he paid for it, but the previous owner paid $44 million at a Christie's auction. "Le Reve" shares her private gallery space with works by Modigliani, Matisse, Cezanne, Gauguin, Manet and Andy Warhol.
Enough of the culture! you cry. This is Vegas, the glitter gulch of impossible dreams.
You want fantasy? Deep in the bowels of Luxor (that's a joke — nothing is deep at Luxor) is the "authentic reproduction of King Tutankaman's tomb." Measurements of each room are exact. Each statute, vase, basket, pottery shard is placed exactly where Howard Carter found it when he peered through a hole at the tomb in 1922. I rate it high-class cheesy.
You want nostalgia? Drive to the Liberace Museum, newly refurbished but still showcasing "Mr. Showmanship's" collection of costumes, pianos, cars and jewelry. The gift shop sells copies of the candelabras.
You want "art" to come to you? Hire an Elvis impersonator from Elvis-A-Rama ($150 an hour plus tip) and get all shook up in the privacy of your hotel room.
Vegas still puts most of its chips on mass marketing — and after all, isn't that part of the reason we go there? Culture will never really replace kitsch. Still, on a Sunday afternoon, when the dice come up craps and the quarter slots refuse to burp cash, a quiet stroll among the old masters helps restore balance.