As Vegas’ premier exhibition venue, the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art showcases magnificent works of art within a AAA Five Diamond Award resort setting.

Located in the heart of the Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas you’ll find the Gallery of Fine Art. Stop by and visit current exhibits to see the artworks that have come from museums as well as private collections.

Here you can expect to view a gallery committed to the presentation of intimate exhibitions of the world’s most compelling artists.

Each year the gallery presents world-class exhibitions of artworks and objects drawn from internationally acclaimed museums and private collections.

Definitely a things to do in Las Vegas for art enthusiasts and those interested in expanding their cultural knowledge.

Thomas Kinkade is self-named as the Painter of Light, which is a trademarked term, and he’s the most-collected artist of our time and likely the best-selling in history.

Kinkade’s artwork is essentially paint-highlighted, canvas-mounted “posters” of originals. His areas of specialty include: light-filled scenes of cottages, lighthouses and chapels, and seaside and pastoral landscapes.

His initial start to artistic stardom bega in 1984 when Thomas Kinkade and his wife, Nanette, set up a card table in a Placerville, California shopping center and they sold the first published prints of his paintings for the bargain price of only $35 each. Of course those originals are now worth thousands of dollars now. The art event was connected to one of many fundraisers that Thomas Kinkade has held for his hometown over the years.

“If you sell a painting, only a few people get to see it,” Kinkade explained. “But if you publish and sell a print, millions get to see it.”

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It seems that model Kate Moss appears to be a more than just a modern day fashion icon. Kate has made her way to goddess status.

Back in August, there was a public preview of a solid gold statue of Kate worth a shocking $2.7 million. The statue weighs quadruple what the rail thin super model weighs herself.

British artist Marc Quinn’s “Siren” will be on display at the Nereid Gallery of the British Museum surrounded by, whom else, but goddesses like Venus the goddess of Love.

Marc Quinn says the supermodel is very thrilled. The Kate Moss look-alike statue is said to be the world’s largest gold statue made since the days of Ancient Egypt. That in itself is amazing.

Since the artistic piece was unveiled at the British Museum in London, it has drawn huge crowds.

“When I showed Kate the statue, she told me she loved it,” Quinn says of the piece, entitled Siren. “She modeled for me for a day or so – but she didn’t pose for me like that.” Noting that Siren is about “trying to live up to impossible dreams or immortality,” something Moss apparently contends with on a daily basis, he says, “For Kate, she thinks it lifts her into a mythic level. I think she very much loved it because she appreciates the difference between her image and herself.”

The moment will be etched in time and history was made yesterday. Spontaneous cheering broke out among millions of Democrats in Chicago and the rest of the U.S, when cable news channel CNN announced that Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected as the first black president of the United States.

Around 11:00 PM EST,  just as California’s voting polls closed, it was their 55 electoral votes that ensured Obama surpassed the magical line of 270 electoral votes required to win the election and become President.

Shortly after that, John McCain acknowledged his defeat and gave a sincere speech thanking his followers and congratulating President elect Obama.

On August 4th, 1961 – Hussein Obama Jr. was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father, Barack Obama, Sr., who were both young college students at the University of Hawaii.

After Barack’s father left for Harvard to attend college, she and Barack remained behind, and his father eventually returned alone back to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist.

Barack’s mother later got remarried to an Indonesian oil manager and they all moved to Jakarta when Barack was just six years old. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. Sadly, Barack’s grandmother died in Hawaii, just one day before he was elected President.

Barack Obama began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School. He eventually ran as a Democrat for the Illinois state senate seat from his home district. The district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side of Chicago. Obama did win that election.

In 2004, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing the state of Illinois. He quickly gained national attention by giving an emotionally rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Barack is married to Michelle Obama and they have two young daughters. Michelle Obama will now become First Lady.

Come January of 2009, once inaugurated, Barack Obama will become the 44th U.S. President and reside over a country with deep economic troubles and a world with many challenges to tackle.

The Liberace Museum is located in two buildings within a mini-mall on Tropicana Avenue. Visiting it is a deeply American experience, like Liberace himself.

Liberace was as flamboyant as they came. What is especially interesting, is how open he was to being gay in an era when it was so very hush, hush.

However, one doesn’t have to be a fervent Liberace fan to appreciate the sheer spectacle that is the Liberace Museum.

Besides the shimmery gold sign and the tinkly piano music wafting from the lobby, who could guess what waits inside the squat stucco building?

This museum has a $6.50 entrance fee, but is well worth it. You can see everything possible dealing with the pianist, and spend a lot of time marveling at the wonders this Museum has to offer.

The museum is filled with endless rows of lavish costumes. Video footage of Liberace shows him to be the consummate entertainer, effortlessly balancing elaborate spectacle and friendly chatter to please his portly, middle-aged fans.

Liberace wasn’t afraid to pull out all the stops for his audiences, such as bringing luxury Rolls Royce cars on stage or telling virgin mink jokes, either. He seemed to enjoy his celebrity status with gusto, and it showed during his energetic performances.

The Las Vegas Art Museum will receive 50 works from famed Dorothy and Herbert Vogel collection from the national gift program “Fifty Works for Fifty States.”

The program, launched by the couple and with National Gallery of Art, titled gives 50 works from the contemporary collection to an institution in each state.

Libby Lumpkin, executive director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, says the museum received a tentative list of works Thursday. The list includes pieces by such artists as Richard Tuttle and Larry Zox.

“We are very honored to have the confidence of the National Gallery of Art,” Lumpkin says. “I have been an admirer of the Vogels and their collection for many, many years. They are the quintessential example of how you can be a collector without having an enormous amount of money. They got to know the artists and the gallerists. They followed their instincts. And they had great instincts.”

The couple started collecting art in the 1960s. Herb Vogel was a postal clerk. Dorothy Vogel was a librarian. Their collection of 4,000 works includes mostly minimal and conceptual art by such artists as Sol Lewitt, Sylvia Plimack Mangold and Christo and Jeanne-Claude

The National Gallery of Art is working with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services on the national gift program.

Lumpkin will attend a celebration for the program in November at the National Gallery of Art. The works are scheduled to arrive in December and the museum will hold an exhibit shortly after.  Article by: Kristen Peterson – Las Vegas Sun

John McCain and Barack Obama’s supporters aren’t the only ones cheering America these days. Art collectors are getting in on the act as well by sending auction houses a very important message: Patriotism sells.

Take the sale of a 5-inch-tall carved wooden eagle. At the end of August in Rockland, Maine, the small eagle carved around the turn of the last century and perched on two American flags sold for more than $60,000–over 10 times its pre-auction estimate.

The sale of the eagle was just one of the highlights of the three-day auction at James Julia Inc.

The other top seller was ”The Goddess of Liberty,” a life-size wood carving from the late 19th century. The sale price for this quirky piece of Americana was $143,750.  Full article

A small drawing of a group of very civilized rabbits tickled the art world by selling for over $500,000 in London recently.

Expected to sell for about $80,000 at Sotheby’s in London, the illustration, ”The Rabbits’ Christmas Party: The Departure” by Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, instead found several buyers willing to pay over four times the pre-sale estimate.

In the end, the ink and watercolor drawing was sold to a British buyer for $578,700, the highest price ever paid for a book illustration at auction.

In the drawing, several rabbits are shown donning their coats, thanking their hosts and exchanging holiday kisses under a bunch of mistletoe hung from the rafters.

It is the final scene of a story written and illustrated by Potter in about 1892.  Full article

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, established in 1935, is among the oldest and largest regional professional repertory theater companies in the United States.

The festival reports that in 2007 total attendance in its three theaters was 404,730, with patrons seeing an average of three shows and almost 90 percent of the audience traveling more than 125 miles to attend.

While it’s called a Shakespeare festival, have no fear, there are plenty of different types of theater to choose from – even different kinds of Shakespeare, for that matter.

There are also modern plays, such as the comedies “The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler” and “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner,” along with classics such as Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.”

This is the place to indulge yourself in theater, and no one makes productions more accessible. Besides its guides to the plays, OSF has numerous tours, lectures and talks, all designed to enhance and deepen your experience of seeing the work on stage.

The festival has nine plays now running; four are Shakespeare, three are very different types of classics, and two are modern . (See accompanying reviews and schedule.)

“The whole theater scene is what draws the people and supports all the good restaurants and other things we have here,” Smith said.

Situated just outside the Oregon rainbelt, eastern- facing hills hover over Ashland, reflecting a perpetual glow – golden in the summer and gleaming white from snow in the winter. “The festival is the magnet, but once people get here, they immerse themselves in a cute little town for three or four days,” Smith said.

“They get caught up in the fine dining, the galleries, the wine-tasting, and it becomes an experience that is far more than the theater.”

Source: Marcus Crowder Sacramento Bee

Those of you who think outside the box and have been fantasizing about a unique way to get married ….. you may want to try this new destination. Carrie Bradshaw found solace in the Registrar’s Office to get hitched, but you may want to try Space!

Japanese space transportation provider Rocketplane Kistler and wedding planner “First Advantage” have come together in this creative venture, that will allow soon-to-be-wed couples to take their vows in space.

The complete wedding package aboard the Rocketplane XP suborbital space plane will cost 240 million yen ($2.2 million). The price includes a wedding ceremony aboard a 1-hour space flight that reaches an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (62.1 miles), as well as a photo and video album, original dress, wedding certificate and other ceremonial items.
The price also includes cost of transportation to and from the launch site, accommodations, a live broadcast of the ceremony to friends and family at a reception hall on the ground, and 4 days of rehearsal.

The space wedding services are scheduled to begin in 2011, but you start applying early next month.

It’s been announced that The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at The Venetian will close May 11, after a long 6-year run. This will bring to the end one of the most audacious experiments in the history of the arts.

From all accounts, the grand experiment did not work. But it wasn’t from a lack of effort from all that were involved and tried to make it a huge, Vegas success.

The museum exhibited some of the world’s greatest works of art in a beautiful space prominently situated within a big, bustling resort – The Venetian. By any conventional measure, it should have attracted longer lines than In-N-Out Burgers.  But it sadly didn’t.

Las Vegas is perhaps the last place on Earth where anyone should expect classical art to draw a crowd. That’s why the Guggenheim’s idea to open a museum here was so audacious. The respected arts organization aimed to prove perceptions wrong by enticing the masses to appreciate the world’s art treasures.  Read more…