Over the past several years, the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas has built a museum-caliber art collection, on view at the hotel’s CityCenter campus.  Featuring works by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Henry Moore, Isa Genzken, Frank Stella and others, the center’s collection is intended to serve the city as a widely accessible collection of artworks, tucked away among the sights and sounds of The Strip.  “What makes a city successful? What makes people want to live there?” Says MGM CEO James Murren. “We do not have an art museum. I thought that was a big quality of life gap.” (more…)

In conjunction with the late Richard Artschwager’s ongoing retrospective at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the museum has partnered with the Los Angeles Nomadic Division and the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas to install a series of the artist’s blps pieces across the cities of LA and Las Vegas.  The museum is also hosting a contest around the blps installation, entering any viewer who posts an image of one on Twitter or Instagram for a drawing to win an Artschwager prize pack.    (more…)

The Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas has installed Tulips, a large-scale stainless steel sculpture by Jeff Koons, in its ground floor rotunda.  Acquired at auction in November for $33,682,500, the work is one of the largest and most complex of Koons’s Celebration series, and will sit near the hotel’s showroom lobby.  “Many people believe that Jeff Koons is one of the most important living artists on canvas and in sculpture in the world today,” said CEO Steve Wynn. “I’m happy to be one of those people and particularly delighted to share with our guests his magnificent creation of the Tulips sculpture.” (more…)