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July 24, 2008 8:47:51 AM CDT

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Guggenheim Vegas Failure a Rare Stumble

Posted May 13, 08 5:54 PM CDT in Business,  Arts & Living 

(Newser) – Now that the shutdown of the Guggenheim Museum's Las Vegas satellites is complete, many in the art world are faulting museum leaders in New York for not understanding the realities of the Strip. But for one LA Times critic, it's not just the Guggenheim that misread Vegas. Rem Koolhaas, the musem's designer and perhaps the world's most lauded architect, deserves some of the blame.

From libraries to Prada stores to Chinese propaganda studios, Koolhaas is a master at providing "architectural authenticity in a post-authentic age," writes Christopher Hawthorne. But he stumbled in Vegas, largely because he "kept the town's maximalist aesthetic at arm's length, rather arrogantly refusing even to aspire to the spectacle we all expected of it."

Source Los Angeles Times

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The now-shuttered Guggenheim outpost in Las Vegas.   (Courtesy Guggenheim Museum)
Rem Koolhaas at the opening of the Seattle Public Library.   (Getty Images)
The Venetian Hotel, in Las Vegas, which formerly hosted the Guggenheim Hermitage.   ((c) Wolfgang Staudt)
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Las Vegas  • architecture  • Las Vegas Strip  • Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum  • Venetian  • Rem Koolhaas


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