Shuttered Las Vegas Art Museum’s collection will relocate to UNLV, tour city

Art never disappears. It only takes vacations.

Maybe three years is more of a sabbatical.

So it is with the collection of the Las Vegas Art Museum, which succumbed to the economy and shuttered its doors in February 2009. Now, its long-homeless inventory will land at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Through a partnership announced Wednesday, the university will acquire the Las Vegas Art Museum's collection of about 200 pieces of mostly contemporary art through a long-term loan and display it throughout the campus starting in late spring or early summer.

"I am excited about this," said Jerry Schefcik, UNLV's art curator and director of the Donna Beam Gallery of Fine Art on the Maryland Parkway campus. "There needs to be a place for it to be seen, to be appreciated, to be used for inspiration."

Calling the arrangement "the next logical step," Patrick Duffy, president of the museum board, said that other museums in Nevada as well as out of state had approached Las Vegas Art Museum about taking over the collection, but "to move it from Las Vegas is the height of rudeness to the city. My intention is, let's get it out to the community."

Las Vegas Art Museum still owns the collection, which Duffy said "spans artists from San Francisco to Berlin. It's got a pretty global feel to it." It has been in local storage since its closure. "It's been very heavily secured and protected," he added.

Display locations at UNLV have yet to be finalized, Schefcik said, though two hosts will be the Beam Gallery and the Marjorie Barrick Museum, which will rotate the pieces with other exhibitions.

Additional campus destinations for it, Schefcik says, "will be determined if they are secure for the art. The primary consideration will be the safety of the art."

Turning the collection mobile also is planned via traveling exhibits around Las Vegas, with an emphasis on exposure to schoolchildren. "This is indeed a boon to all students at UNLV," said Jeffrey Koep, dean of the College of Fine Arts, in a statement. "However, the real desire is to share the collection with the Las Vegas community, especially the children who are students in the Clark County School District."

Las Vegas Art Museum, which began as an art league in 1950, became a fine art museum in 1974 and moved into the Sahara West Library in 1997. A victim of the economic downturn, the museum closed its doors Feb. 28, 2009 . With public funding making up only 3 percent of its budget, the board slashed it to less than $1 million for the year, prompting the resignation of executive director Libby Lumpkin.

Maintaining the museum name following the closure, Duffy noted that the UNLV loan is a "memorandum of understanding" that, in the event of an economic recovery and the museum's re-opening in another location, the collection will be returned.

That goal has not changed, Duffy said, adding: "The city deserves it."

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.