VEGASinsight Archives

“Spectral Whispers” by Geoffrey Todd Smith, on display now at Main Gallery

For every pessimist (or recent transplant) out there who decries Las Vegas’ standing in the world of art, we have a little news for you: Get over it. Our still-young city has only one way to go in its quest for cultural credibility, and in the last week or two, a number of happenings have moved Vegas ahead quite a few steps.

By now, everyone’s been pummeled to near-death by the news that Art in America named Stephen Hendee’s Centennial Plaza sculpture “Monument to the Simulacrum” one of the Top 10 public art projects in the United States. So we’re not going to spend any more bandwidth on that.

However, the very same magazine, in its October 2008 issue, reviewed Erin Stellmon’s solo exhibition, “Shangri-La,” which held court in Main Gallery (1009 S. Main St.) last February. Main’s current exhibition is “Looking You Up to Look You Up & Down” by Geoffrey Todd Smith. This collection of rhythmic, patterned works on paper by the Chicago artist will be on display throughout October.

And our final note in today’s round-up of “see, we’ve got culture” news comes from the always-informative and sometimes-irreverent CityBlog, which reported Wednesday that the Las Vegas Art Museum will be receiving a donation of 50 works from the collection of Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, which includes such artists as Bettina Werner, F.L. Schroder and Larry Zox. You really need to read this story – it’s a pretty incredible tale of philanthropy and, of course, local art awesomeness.

CityLife, the Las Vegas alt-weekly owned by the decidedly alt-nothing Stephens Media Group (publisher of the Review-Journal), recently launched a new forum for its staffers to unload humorous news commentary upon the unsuspecting public, CityBlog. The blogosphere is not a new territory for the paper — editor Steve Sebelius has ranted in his own CL-hosted blog, Various Things and Stuff, for quite a while now. But CityBlog is the place where all of the publication’s staffers can mind-dump about such topics as politics, nightlife, live music, the Arts District and, uh, necrogasms.

It’s assembled with a somewhat (depending on the writer) tongue-in-cheek tone and uses random photos gathered from the internet to illustrate the sometimes irreverent commentary. We might even add its RSS feed to our Google Reader. But we’ll let you decide what you do with yours. Ahem.