NRR: Las Vegas, The Bellagio and art

[Expiry2011]

(Seems to be a day for non record related posts!)

I'm thinking of doing some studying around the Steve Wynn Collection in Las Vegas.
He built an art collection of Impressionist, post-Impressionist and early Pop works with the specfic intention of displaying them in his casino the Bellagio to boost the number of tourists (and make more money)

I am interested in the conflicts a gallery in a casino poses in terms of the commercialisation of art, the use of art by corporations, the politicistion of museums and the utility of collections (think Saatchi Gallery) and the changing nature of art collecting

I was wondering if anyone here had seen the Bellagio gallery when it was open or had any experience of art in unexpected places, or art used for unexpected reasons

Apologies that his has absolutely nothing to do with records - I promise to post some record related stuff soon

[No, LordNo]

I'm an artist and I have a patron who is in the casino business. So I know a little about this..

In America there's a lot less government funding for the arts, most museums have corporate sponsors for exhibitions. It's not like the UK where New Labor decided that somehow supporting contemporary art was a way of promoting British culture, etc. America behaved similarly- providing funding to promote the Abstract Expressionists and especially Pop artists (pushing Warhol and his Elvis, Marilyn, Coke, Capmbell's soup, etc. was a no brainer..) in the early 1960s.

But really, this questioning presupposes a time when art wasn't instrumentalized, politicized, or subject to economic schemes. This has always been the case. How is art collecting changing now? That's quite a big question.. the Saatchi model is kind of dead- a lot of people who got into the field of art to mimic Saatchi's strategy have packed up and moved on since the recession hit. Art collecting is just a tiny facet of greater economic and political forces- the rise of China, Oil wealth, post war movements, and so on and so forth..there's kind of a billion ways you could go with this depending on exactly what you want to know or what sort of thesis you're pushing.

[alanmck]

if you mention the bloke from the Dream Syndicate, then you could make it about records as well.