LACMA Will Time-Share "The Clock" with Las Vegas
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| Still from Christian Marclay's The Clock (2010), appropriating Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923) |
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA) will open a "media lab" in spring 2026. This will be a small structure, with 6500 sf of exhibition space, intended to build enthusiasm for the much larger, Francis Kéré-designed museum previously announced. Like the future museum, the Media Lab will be programmed with work from LACMA's collection. Among the first loans is Christian Marclay's The Clock, the popular synchronized supercut of clocks in old movies and TV shows.
LVMA has no collection of its own. Its one-sided art sharing arrangement with LACMA—endorsed by late founder Elaine Wynne and LACMA director Michael Govan—has generated more enthusiasm in Sin City than Los Angeles. A Magritte that's in Las Vegas can't simultaneously be in L.A. But it's easier to make a case for time-sharing video art. The Clock is one of six editions, all owned by museums. LACMA has shown its copy of The Clock three times, for several-month runs in 2011, 2012, and 2015.
Comments
I believe the Pearlmans bequeathed to LACMA on the strength of the museum's policy of outreach.
A community that thrives on the resort-gambling industry spending time and money on a traditional visual-arts museum seems somehow extraneous.
The flip side of that would be building an amusement park next to the Louvre in Paris. Although there's admittedly a Disney park about 26 miles from the main museum in France's capital.
Okay, I guess an art museum in Vegas makes sense after all.
> will
Actually, I concluded that if Paris can have both the Louvre and an Orlando-type amusement park, no reason why Vegas can't also have an art museum to go along with its many casinos, some themed to New York City, ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, etc.
Incidentally, I believe Orlando, Florida attracts more tourists than any other city inf the US, just as Paris, France attract more tourists than any other city in the world.
Actually, I didn't post anything about LACMA and the museum in Vegas. My first comment under this blog entry was about "art museum" and "Las Vegas" sounding reminiscent to me of seeing a "Saks" paired with a Fresno or Compton.
Blum & Poe closed down. No mention on this blog
Elaine Wynn died. No mention on this blog.
...
There was a report on Blum & Poe in my local paper.
Article below [I dropped the paywall]..
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/arts/design/tim-blum-la-gallery-art-closing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fU8.Ovlv.dpSFieo5Cr_h&smid=url-share
I do occasionally link to stories from lesser-read sources (such as the Museum of Jurassic Technology fire) that weren’t in the mainstream cultural media.
As the blog title indicates, it’s about museums, not commercial galleries.
I think it’s more useful to cover that beat as well as my time permits than to stray into galleries, a subject worthy of its own coverage.
I saw another article about his former business partner, Jeff Poe, who left their gallery operations around 2 years ago. He has a home in Santa Barbara and one in Malibu, which was lost in the huge fires in January. He was planning exhibition space in it (public or quasi-public), which obviously is no more.
Poe says the fires were so devastating that they've changed the city forever. They're a metaphor for today's LA. They're sort of what Sept 11, 2001 was to NYC. Which is why recent news about elaborate thievery of underground wiring in LA for copper (knocking out working street lights) and of pubic plagues and statues for their metal seems very fitting for this moment in history.
As for the AMPAS museum west of the concrete monolith of the Geffen Galleries, I wonder if it will ever do an exhibit on an industry that for over 60 years has increasingly left LA----after the film people took decades for their museum to be finally created? (I just saw an article about a major American movie franchise deciding to move its productions to London.)