And now to art and efforts to establish the very first stand-alone fine arts museum in Las Vegas.

Organizers aim to open the Las Vegas Museum of Art in Symphony Park in 2029.

The project is expected to cost $150 million.

Before passing away in 2025, esteemed business woman, philanthropist, and arts patron Elaine Wynn called this museum a personal legacy project.

A long-time donor to and board member of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also known as LACMA, Wynn enlisted LACMA to help develop the Las Vegas museum.

Heather Harmon is its executive director, and in a recent interview shared how this partnership came to be.

(Heather Harmon) The project really was galvanized in the end of 2022 where LACMA was accomplishing such major milestones, including fundraising milestones, that it just felt like now is the time to advance the Las Vegas Museum of Art.

-And there has been some pushback from LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from its patrons.

Why are you going to take funding and its artwork and bring it to Las Vegas instead of keeping it in Southern California?

-So we're not taking funding.

We're partners.

So the Las Vegas Museum of Art is autonomous.

It has a separate board, a separate governance structure.

We fundraise for our efforts.

-And you're still fundraising, right?

-We are still fundraising.

But what will work with LACMA is a deep partnership that really stems from programming.

LACMA is the largest institution in the Western United States.

They have over 140,000 works of art to share.

And by and large, most museums cannot even show a fraction of their collection at any given time.

And so part of LACMA's mission is to expand access to art.

And this expansion of access and accessibility was something that really resonated deeply with Elaine and especially in this community.

And that means that we can design exhibitions that are specifically for our community.

And in addition to the programmatic threads, we can also learn from their guidance on educational programming.

We can adapt programs to our community.

And something they do very beautifully that I think is important for us to recognize is not everyone can come to you.

And so how do you go out in the community?

And how do we, as an institution, partner with schools, educational institutions, and bring the museum to a classroom?

So we're really excited to have their leadership and their guidance and that stewardship so that we can turn that inward to our community and give that same level of care.

-What are your thoughts when you hear people say, I'm not sure the Las Vegas community will support an art museum?

-I think that the Las Vegas community has expanded well beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

We have accomplished so much.

I think one of the things that we don't yet do in the way that we can is celebrate.

We are a young city, and everything we've done as a young city is extraordinary.

And I think the more we grow, and I know this is very important to our mission, is that we give this cultural grounding to the millions of people that make the magic of Las Vegas happen.

And so I think very intentionally, we wanted to be in Symphony Park.

And Symphony Park, to us, is that space where you have the Philharmonic and you have the ballet and you have the Discovery Children's Museum and the Smith Center, which is such a beacon for us all.

That is a perfect space to have a museum to complement the cultural amenities that are flourishing in our community, and we should be bringing more.

-Elaine Wynn has said this is going to be her legacy.

What does that mean to you?

What kind of expectations does she have, did she have?

-Elaine was so extraordinary.

She really valued education, and she valued this community.

And we love to continue that people-forward, that caring space that she created.

And we want to see that legacy unfold.

We want it to be represented in the architecture.

We want it to be represented in how welcoming the institution is, and we want it represented in the level of care that we give to our community, a community that she loved so much.

-Tell me about the architecture.

Did she have her fingerprints on that?

It's beautiful.

-She did.

She selected the most extraordinary value and mission-aligned architect that we could-- -So she selected him?

- --ever have dreamed of.

Elaine, along with the board, chose Francis Kéré to design the building.

And Francis is a Pritzker laureate, which is essentially the highest level of award you could receive in excellence for architecture.

He is from Burkina Faso in Africa, and he lives and works in Berlin.

But he really started his career building schools and education spaces and spaces for people and spaces for community.

And he had such a strong sustainability grounding.

And he's such an incredible listener, that the architecture itself is a response to our community.

When he came on his first visit to Las Vegas, he just saw so many things, from Hoover Dam to Valley of Fire to Red Rock to the Guardian Angel Cathedral.

He had this amazing sense of absorption of Southern Nevada, and specifically Las Vegas, because it was his intent to build a building that we would feel we could see ourselves in.

-Did he know about the architect behind the cathedral?

-So he, when he came, it was his first visit to Las Vegas, and we were able to share with him the history of Paul Revere Williams, which he immediately responded to.

And Paul Revere Williams is such an icon of modernist architecture.

And for us to have such a significant work of his here in Las Vegas--and that is a space that we take visitors--and we enjoy giving tours of it.

And I think when people see it, they are, it's unexpected.

They get a different perspective of Las Vegas.

And Las Vegas is such an image.

Everybody globally has an idea of what Las Vegas is.

And I think what a cultural institution has the possibility of doing is writing that story for us, is giving us a space and a place where we can message out who we are, and we can start to participate in the narrative.

-Groundbreaking on the Las Vegas Museum of Art is set for 2027 with a grand opening in 2029.