Las Vegas CityLife Arts Editor Weighs In
February 11, 2010
Check out the following article on THE MISSION LAS VEGAS appearing today in Las Vegas CityLife. Be sure to leave comments on the Las Vegas CityLife page with your thoughts regarding THE MISSION LAS VEGAS and prospects for the future of the 18b Arts District and downtown Las Vegas.
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2010/02/11/ae/art/iq_34227908.txt
Las Vegas Arts & Culture Facebook Rankings
February 5, 2010
19,831 fans – Cirque du Soleil
7,478 fans – Cleveland Clinic
7,043 fans - Wynn Las Vegas
6,825 fans – Harry Reid
6,816 fans – Town Square Las Vegas
4,520 fans – Encore Las Vegas
3,036 fans – Rory Reid
2,658 members – First Friday Las Vegas / Whirlygig, Inc.
2,136 fans – THE MISSION LAS VEGAS
2,077 fans – Fremont Street Experience
1,819 members – Burlesque Hall of Fame
1,658 fans – Beauty Bar Las Vegas
1,636 fans – Charlie Palmer
1,419 friends – Don’t Tell Mama
1,412 fans – City of Henderson
1,408 fans – Opportunity Village
1,369 friends – Nevada Ballet
1,339 fans – Paymon’s Mediterranean Cafe & Hookah Lounge
1,330 fans – College of Southern Nevada
1,300 fans – The Neon Museum
1,062 fans – Le Reve
951 fans – World Market Center Las Vegas
914 fans – Neon Reverb Music Festival
798 fans – Clark County, Nevada
788 fans - Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino
786 fans – Bombay Gin
723 members – Oscar Goodman – Happiest Mayor in the World
642 fans – Allure Las Vegas
593 group members – Arts Factory Las Vegas
586 fans – Downtown *Firefly*
518 fans – City of North Las Vegas, Nevada
480 fans – City of Las Vegas
468 members – Erotic Heritage Museum
411 fans – UNLV College of Fine Arts
392 members – KNPR
391 members – Steve Evans for City Council
376 members – Trifecta Gallery
350 friends – Councilman Steve Wolfson
341 group members – Brett Wesley Gallery
323 fans – Nevada State Museum
308 members – Downtown Cocktail Room
275 friends – Stavros Anthony
262 fans – Jim Gibbons
248 fans – UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum
243 fans – Lied Discovery Children’s Museum
241 friends – Laura Henkel Fine Art
233 friends – Steve Ross
223 fans – UNLV School of Architecture
192 fans – Stratosphere Las Vegas
132 members – Hogs & Heifers Las Vegas
166 fans – Sidebar
142 members – Hispanic Museum of Nevada
107 fans – Mob Museum
David Mozes will be the featured guest speaker at the Metro Arts Council network gathering on Tuesday February 2 from 5:30-7:30pm at Historic Fifth Street School in downtown Las Vegas. He will be presenting a synopsis of THE MISSION LAS VEGAS development project that is located in the heart of the 18b Arts District in downtown Las Vegas.
THE MISSION LAS VEGAS is looking to nurture, cultivate, and promote art, music, culture, sustainability, community, and non-profit organizations in Southern Nevada on a mixed-use, transit-oriented, arts-focused campus directly adjacent to the Arts District station (#6) along the RTC’s new ACE Gold Line rapid transit link connecting all of downtown Las Vegas with the Convention Center, the Strip, and McCarran International Airport. Boutique retail shops, specialty restaurants, creative offices, art studios and galleries, banquet event space, and nightly live music will be featured in a pedestrian-friendly community-oriented environment.
Our approach to incorporating art, music, and culture into the above is what sets THE MISSION LAS VEGAS apart from everything else that already exists in the Las Vegas valley. We hope to create a venue that locals from throughout the Las Vegas valley will call their own, while visitors to our region find it equally accessible due to our rapid transit connection.
ALL are encouraged to attend this free community event. Light refreshments will be served.
Article mentioning THE MISSION in KNPR’s Desert Companion magazine
September 16, 2009
Click the link below to check out the brief profile of David Mozes and THE MISSION LAS VEGAS in the September-October 2009 issue of KNPR’s Desert Companion magazine.
Interview with KNPR’s Dave Berns on the State of Nevada radio program
September 8, 2009
Today David Mozes, Managing Principal of THE MISSION LAS VEGAS, participated in a radio interview discussing Art Optimism in Las Vegas on KNPR’s State of Nevada with Dave Berns radio program. Click the link above to hear the discussion, also including Marty Walsh from Trifecta Gallery and Jennifer Harrington of Henri & Odette Gallery.
Frank Gehry’s design for the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health is taking shape in downtown Las Vegas. Many of the architect’s friends are artists, and some have agreed to offer works for display and sale at the center for its fundraising.
By Kristen Peterson, Las Vegas Sun
Proceeds from rotating exhibitions of contemporary art to be funneled back into patient care, research
The Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health has hired Libby Lumpkin, former executive director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, to amass and curate a rotating art exhibition.
The art will be displayed at the center, and visitors will pay admission to view the work, which will also be for sale, said Larry Ruvo, who founded the center in honor of his father. Proceeds of admissions and sales will be funneled back into the institution and its clinical care and medical research.
The program adds to the high-end credentials of the clinic being built in downtown’s Symphony Park: building by Frank Gehry, acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, food by Wolfgang Puck and now, museum-quality works by some of the top names in contemporary art.
Neither Lumpkin nor Ruvo would say which artists will be represented in the collection, but Lumpkin did say many are friends of Gehry’s and that they are among the most “outstanding contemporary masters living today.”
Work by some of the artists has appeared in two Las Vegas Art Museum exhibits, “Southern California Minimalism” and “Las Vegas Collects.” Among the artists included in those exhibitions were James Turrell, John McCracken, Larry Bell, Craig Kauffman, Ron Davis, Peter Alexander, Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, David Hockney and Donald Judd.
Ruvo came up with the idea after several artists expressed interest in having their works in the building. The art program is designed to get people through the doors and give them an opportunity to learn about brain diseases.
“Now there’s an added reason to come inside and not just take pictures outside,” Ruvo said.
Lumpkin, an art historian who curated Steve Wynn’s collection at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, helped bring cutting-edge contemporary art to the Las Vegas Art Museum before resigning because of budget tightening. The museum closed three months later.
Lumpkin began working for the Ruvo Center this month and has been asking artists to participate in the program. Works by Gehry will also be on display and for sale at the center.
Gehry is known as an architect who pals around with artists, rather than other architects. Many of those relationships were established in Venice, Calif., during the 1960s and ’70s.
In 2005 Gehry curated an exhibit, “The Artists of Venice Beach 1962-1978,” at the Weisman Art Museum, a building in Minneapolis that he designed. The exhibit featured the work of 16 artists whose work influenced his early career.
Lumpkin said the artists’ response has been positive: “They’ll say, ‘My mother has Parkinsons, my father has Alzheimer’s. I want to do something.’
“Also, this building and this center are personally important to Frank Gehry.”
Gehry is associated with the Hereditary Disease Foundation, which seeks a cure for Huntington’s disease and other genetic illnesses.
Lumpkin’s expertise in contemporary art and the complexities of art installation, and her relationships with artists, will enable the center to obtain works by quality artists, Ruvo said. Frank Gehry’s name, building and relationships with artists are also key: “It’s very exciting to be leveraging Frank’s friends and resources. He has an amazing group of artist friends.”
Ruvo said that he is impressed with what “Frank did with Jeff Koons in Bilbao,” referring to Koons’ enormous floral puppy installed outside the museum, and that he would love to see a Koons at the Ruvo Center.
Other health institutions have incorporated fine art into the patient and public areas of their buildings, including the Cleveland Clinic, which has more than 3,500 works of contemporary and modern art in its collection, which hangs in the institute. Cleveland Clinic has a healing through art program.
The Nevada Cancer Institute also has a permanent contemporary art collection on display in public areas and in patient rooms.
Using art to better understand brain diseases is being studied by the New York University School of Medicine in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art through its Meet Me at MoMA program. The program, launched in 2006, welcomes patients in early and middle stages of Alzheimer’s into the museum for tours and to engage in dialogue.
Though some institutes have art in their collections that is auctioned off, the Ruvo art program is unique in that the main purpose of the art program is to raise money for the institution. The activities center and convention hall at the Ruvo Center is also designed to raise money. The space will be used for conventions and private party rentals.
Lumpkin says she’s pleased to be associated with the project: “You can hate art. You can hate art museums, but nobody can argue the need for the cure for these diseases.”
Source: lasvegassun.com
Follow THE MISSION on Twitter!
June 30, 2009
Follow THE MISSION on Twitter to be first to hear all the latest news and updates regarding the development and programming of THE MISSION LAS VEGAS. THE MISSION also follows many of the premier art, music, culture, sustainability, community, and non-profit tweeps for your reference.
Check out THE MISSION LAS VEGAS at Meetup.com
June 30, 2009
Join THE MISSION LAS VEGAS group at Meetup.com and participate in our monthly Meetup where we discuss ways to nurture, cultivate, and promote art, music, culture, sustainability, community, and non-profit organizations at THE MISSION.
Become a fan of THE MISSION on Facebook!
June 30, 2009
If you care about art, music, culture, sustainability, community, or non-profit organizations, then become a fan of THE MISSION on Facebook and be notified of news updates on our programming and development.
Why Not Have a Walkable Arts Cluster? We Do, Sort Of
June 24, 2009
by Kristen Peterson, Las Vegas Sun
Downtown offers a lot, but people will still wonder, ‘What if …’
When word spread a few months ago that the Pinball Hall of Fame would be moving to a spot across the street from the Liberace Museum, the responses were similar:
“How perfect. Two American pop culture venues within a reasonable proximity of each other.”
“The Star Trek Experience should move over there.”
“Revive the Elvis museum, plop it down. Clustered together, we’d have synergy, a place where unique local attractions aren’t 20 strip malls apart.”
Why stop there?
Wouldn’t it be something if the city’s contemporary galleries, artist studios and boutique stores were clustered in one area? Add a coffee shop, a book store, maybe a restaurant and, wow, imagine the possibilities. All the elements are there. Just put them in one place and call it an arts district. The city could invest a little money and designate the area, create lamp post banners, invite business and gallery owners into the storefront spaces and work with them on permits.
There’s the Aerial Gallery that runs along Las Vegas Boulevard downtown. Why not move it to Charleston between Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard?
That would say so much. People would realize that life is stirring within those seemingly dilapidated buildings, that something is going on. Marketing is everything, you know.
But would it work? Hard to say.
Vegas has an arts district, but it is shabby and fragmented. Within its 18 blocks, the district has a cluster of antique shops, a vintage furniture store (Retro Vegas) full of midcentury modern goodies culled mostly from Las Vegas homes, a Mexican restaurant, the Contemporary Arts Center, Trifecta Gallery, a yoga studio, low-rent artist studios and art and design businesses. Paymon’s Mediterranean Bistro opened this week in the Arts Factory, where Valentino’s Zootsuit Connection, which sells glamour vintage clothing, will relocate. Up the street from the Arts Factory is the Fremont Entertainment District, home to Beauty Bar, the Downtown Cocktail Room and the Don’t Tell Mama piano bar. Around the corner from there is Henri & Odette, a gallery and coffee shop, next to a neighborhood grocery store.
On paper, downtown Las Vegas is rich with culture. Galleries open and close, and that will continue. So will the conversations on how to build and keep momentum in the arts, and the battles with the city on permits and codes. There is the endless sputtering of “if only.”
“If only there were a bar in the arts district …”
“If only there were a coffee shop …”
“If only people would leave their homes and not just on the closing night of a gallery or to go to the downtown First Friday festival …”
Unfortunately we lost some great galleries and boutiques in the area. But Paymon’s and Valentino’s should draw some foot traffic.
How perfect.
If only the Onyx Theatre, home to alternative, original and absurdist plays and dance events, could move into the arts district, then things would take off — especially with the Samuel Beckett Festival happening each year in the Mission Building behind the Arts Factory.
If only people knew they could eat lunch on a Saturday at Paymon’s or Casa Don Juan, then walk across the street to Retro Vegas, then to Gypsy Caravan antiques, then walk up Colorado Avenue to the Arts Factory and look at exhibits at Trifecta Gallery and the Contemporary Arts Center. Wouldn’t that be great?
After that they could get in their cars (because that’s what we do best) and drive over to Henri & Odette for coffee or any one of the new local taverns for a drink.
How perfect.
Source: lasvegassun.com
