Russ noted the opening of a new Guggenheim museum in Las Vegas. The Guardian article also notes that the museum will be open until at least 11pm. This sounds great to me, and it's not unexpected. It's the only city I've ever lived in that kept what I consider to be decent hours. Nothing really closes, you can buy housepaint and furniture at 3am. I often wake up at night with art-cravings, it's too bad that Vegas is off my list of prospective residences.
This is oddly coincidental. I just started scanning some of my Vegas photographs a few days ago, thinking of a new gallery for this site. My photographs aren't what you'd call a typical view of Vegas: no neon. It's a very ugly place in the daytime, and I hadn't started photographing at night when I lived there. I did the neon thing later in my career. But perhaps the prime reason why I think this museum will be successful is that sex sells. The Guggenheim's experience in Italy, as relayed by the Art News article, makes me think that a museum in this city could become a new hot spot:
A lead article in the Italian daily Il Gazzettino exclaimed: "Who would ever have said that the corridors of the Accademia Museum in Florence were more erotically charged than the atmosphere in a discotheque? That Botticelli’s Primavera instigates hard-core thoughts and actions, and that the rooms of the Guggenheim Museum in Venice are more stimulating than Viagra?"Vegas is nothing if not "erotically charged," at night anyway.
