Intersection

[Our Metropolis] Three questions with Libby Lumpkin

The art-museum director chats about art in Vegas

John Katsilometes

This is an excerpt from the radio show Our Metropolis, a half-hour local issues and affairs program that airs Tuesdays at 6 p.m. on KUNV 91.5-FM and is hosted by Las Vegas Weekly writer-at-large John Katsilometes. Tune in next week to hear the rest of this interview with Las Vegas Art Museum Director Libby Lumpkin:

We should note from the top that you are married to renowned art critic and author Dave Hickey, who received the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2002. What’s it like being married to a genius?

Insufferable, as you might imagine [laughs].

Is it more challenging or difficult being director of an art museum in Las Vegas than it might be elsewhere?

Just being in the arts—I am an art historian by training, having taught at Harvard and Yale, big schools like that, and having been in the big arts centers—and trying to remain employed in this town is one of the main challenges. Sometimes you just have to create a museum so you have a place to work [laughs].

The Las Vegas Art Museum is about eight miles west of the Strip on Sahara Avenue, just on the cusp of Summerlin, and this year you announced that you are going to be moving to the south Strip, near the Town Square shopping mall. Why are you making that move?

What was behind the move was simple logistics. We cannot market to tourists for a couple of reasons. One is that cab fare from the airport or the Strip is $85 round-trip. So people were coming and sometimes—because we have a small exhibition space, a little bit more than 7,000 square feet and we have to shut down completely between exhibits. Because of this, we have had people coming out from the Strip or the airport and have been very, very unhappy to arrive during one of our dark periods, having paid the cab driver and knowing they are going to have to pay him again. So we can’t market to tourists, and that’s important because Las Vegas is made up of more than just the residents. We have nearly 40 million itinerant visitors to the city that we need to reach. The new space is close to the Strip on Sunset Road, great access to 215 and I-15, and we are blessed that it will have 30,000 square feet of exhibition space so we will never have to be closed for installation.

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