From the Met to the Palms, artworks swim between the high and low

British artist Damien Hirst’s work at center of redesign

The Palms has a secret. The over the sleek bar, each segment of Las Vegas hotel’s new central flesh floating in its own steel-and-glass bar is hidden behind tank filled with formaldehyde. Paintings two layers of curtains. A bearing multicolored spots hang on the burly security guard mans the entrance, walls around it, infusing the tanks with warding off curious hotel guests and any rainbow-hued reflections of dots that gamblers who wander over from nearby seemingly flow through the shark’s open, craps tables. What lies inside? A toothy mouth and around its pointed shark, severed into three pieces. It presides snout.

The shark is British artist museums around the world.

Damien Hirst’s 1999 sculpture Those works, among Hirst’s “The Unknown (Explored, most iconic, are part of his Natural

Explained, Exploded),” and History series, which tends it swims at the Palms’ new to stir admiration from fans and

Unknown Bar, which Hirst vitriol from animal rights activists. designed. But the polarizing reactions

Palms owners Frank and aren’t a negative thing, says

Lorenzo Fertitta, who sold mixed Palms general manager Jon Gray. martial arts promoter Ultimate “That’s the whole point of art

Fighting Championship for $4 in general,” Gray says. “It evokes billion in 2016, are fans of Hirst’s different emotions. Art is personal. work and own many of his pieces. We like that it stirs different

They purchased the tiger shark reactions and attention.” directly from Hirst, who created Beyond the ethical questions the piece after acquiring the of using animals in art, the Hirst nearly 13-foot-long carcass from installation at the Palms raises a fisherman in Australia. It’s interesting philosophical questions never been exhibited before, but about art in general. What versions of it have been seen in constitutes an exhibition space these days — or art itself, for that matter?

Another Hirst tiger shark tank, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (1991), remains one of Hirst’s most famous works. It was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 2007 to 2010 and at London’s Tate Modern in 2012. That the Hirst sharks have found themselves exhibited in some of the most hallowed grounds of fine art and now also the bar of a Las Vegas casino is a ripe dichotomy. Does it speak to the ongoing blending of high and low cul-

STEVE MARCUS British artist Damien Hirst’s 1999 sculpture “The Unknown (Explored, Explained, Exploded)” is displayed May 21 at the Unknown Bar at the Palms. The new center bar in the Palms is part of the property’s $620 million renovation project.