Reno merger a big step toward LV art museum

A Las Vegas art museum is one step closer to reality.

The nonprofit group working toward establishing a downtown museum has officially joined forces with the Reno-based Nevada Museum of Art to create a statewide institution.

The proposed Art Museum at Symphony Park’s new, official name: the Nevada Museum of Art, Las Vegas.

“We’re excited, we’re hopeful, we’re enthusiastic,” Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said of the merger. “It’s another building block toward building a world-class city.”

Las Vegas museum proponents and Reno museum officials have been working for more than two years on the merger, which was completed last month and announced Wednesday inanewsrelease.

“Generations of Southern Nevadans have imagined and worked toward the creation of a significant, permanent fine art museum in Las Vegas that exhibits, teaches and celebrates art,” said Katie O’neill, the Las Vegas native who chaired AMSP and is now on NMA’S board. “With this merger, our community is now in a stronger position to bring that vision into reality.”

The next step: hiring a founding director for the Las Vegas museum. While a national firm conducts a search, museum officials will continue building a joint board of trustees and planning a statewide capital campaign.

Last year, AMSP and NMA co-pre

MUSEUM

sented the NMA exhibit “Tilting the Basin: Contemporary Art of Nevada” at a pop-up downtown location. The groups also worked to obtain $1 million in state funding to support merger and expansion plans.

Museum officials have raised $1 million to match the state appropriation, according to Uri Vaknin, a downtown real estate developer who was an AMSP board member — and is now on NMA’S board.

“What I loved was that we all shared the same vision and how to get there,” he said of the museum trustees.

Museum backers probably will need to raise “tens of millions of dollars” to build a Las Vegas art museum,

Vaknin said. “Like The Smith Center, it’s a major endeavor.”

The Las Vegas City Council helped jump-start the proposed museum in 2015 by donating land in Symphony Park — and $2 million toward its construction. Last month, the council approved assigning the donation agreement to NMA, the only art museum in Nevada accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

Las Vegas ranks as the 29th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. — and the only one in the top 50 without an accredited art museum, according to NMA.

Vaknin called the art museum “the last missing ingredient in order to become a world-class city.”

Contact Carol Cling at ccling@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Carolscling on Twitter.