The Venetian Las Vegas Casino Hotel is doing its part to advance the cultural renaissance in Sin City, with the October, 2001, opening of the Guggenheim Las Vegas and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum.
The Guggenheim Las Vegas is designed as an exhibition space -- not as a museum with a permanent collection. The 63,700-square-foot exhibition hall is designed with the aesthetic and practical capability not found in any other museum or exhibition space in the world.
The main gallery is approximately 210 feet long, 160 feet wide, and 70 feet high. The main floor of the large gallery is breached by a 200-foot-by-30-foot trench, which can be obscured with 21 five-ton covers to create a single level. Alternatively, the covers can be selectively removed to reveal the galleries on the lower level. The lower level is accessed either by escalators or via a 30-foot-wide, lime-green processional staircase. An immense skylight in the ceiling features motorized levered covers, located on the roof, which can either filter out all natural light or be fully opened to the sky. In a witty gesture to the Las Vegas aesthetic, the museum features a large-scale facsimile of the central scene from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. Additionally, a media wall that is 60 feet high and 120 feet wide comprises the west wall of the main gallery, which features a combination of moving and still images depending on the exhibition.
While the Guggenheim Las Vegas is more of a hosting exhibition hall, the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum was conceived as a venue of permanent exhibitions based on the collections of the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums. The Vegas museum is the result of a long-term collaboration agreement between the Guggenheim Foundation and the State Hermitage Museum, an alliance formed to make each museum's respective collections accessible to broader audiences, as well as to share resources, implement joint exhibition, Internet, publishing, and educational initiatives, and to facilitate each institution's long-term goals.