About

Unwaveringly passionate about Las Vegas, the city she proudly called home, Elaine Wynn believed deeply in the consequential impact of art, education, and culture on civic life. Building on the legacy of pioneering community leaders who helped shape Las Vegas before her, Elaine transformed Las Vegas through a people-forward vision of art, culture, and lifelong learning.

Among her countless contributions to Las Vegas, Elaine’s greatest dream was to build a major art museum for the city. She believed that as Las Vegas took its place among the great cities of the world, it needed the cultural grounding of an institution devoted to art and education. As Board Co-Chair of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, she understood the transformative role a museum can play in the life of a great city.

To realize this vision, Elaine sought out leaders who shared her belief in the power of art and established LVMA’s Founding Board. Today, the Board of Trustees carry Elaine’s vision forward, building upon her legacy to Las Vegas: a home for art, education, creativity, community, and belonging.

LVMA will present art across ages, cultures, disciplines, and media, creating opportunities to experience the full span of human creativity. From ancient to contemporary art, painting and sculpture to video, sound, and experimental media, exhibitions will invite discovery, reflection, and new ways of seeing.

Through a long-term partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the largest art museum in the Western United States, LVMA will draw upon a collection of 155,000 objects spanning 6,000 years of artistic expression across the globe. Together, LVMA and LACMA will create exhibitions and educational programs for Las Vegas audiences, expanding access to extraordinary works of art and creating opportunities for people to encounter new perspectives and see themselves reflected in the stories art can tell.

Exhibitions, school tours, artist and curator talks, screenings, artmaking workshops, family days, and other public programs will launch in 2027 with the opening of LVMA: Grand Central Galleries. In 2029, LVMA’s flagship building will exponentially expand these programmatic offerings, with two floors of galleries and dedicated spaces for education, gathering, and public programs.

Gillian Wynn, Co-Chair
Perry Rogers, Co-Chair
Michael Govan, President
Frank “Gard” Jameson, Treasurer
Dana Lee, Secretary
Roger Thomas, Trustee
Kevyn Wynn, Trustee

Heather Harmon, Executive Director

Designed by Francis Kéré, founder of Kéré Architecture and a global leader in sustainable design, LVMA’s 60,000-square-foot flagship building responds to the distinctive landscape, climate, and architectural history of Las Vegas. Kéré is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and has received numerous international honors, including the Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence. A longtime educator at institutions including the Yale School of Architecture, Kéré and his firm recently celebrated 25 years of practice, chronicled in the 2026 TASCHEN monograph Francis Kéré: Building Stories.

Kéré Architecture serves as Design Architect, in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) as Architect of Record and OJB Landscape Architecture.

Drawing design inspiration from the Desert, the façade will be clad in locally sourced metaquartzite, reflecting the warm, shifting tones of the Red Rock National Conservation Area. The architecture also looks to Las Vegas’ modernist legacy, including Paul Revere Williams and Guardian Angel Cathedral, a distinctive desert sanctuary that has offered a place of refuge and respite in the heart of the city, since 1963.

A broad canopy provides shade for the Sculpture Plaza, helping reduce heat and create a comfortable outdoor gathering place. Transparent glazing opens the Museum to the landscape, while inside, the red-toned Canyon staircase rises toward a skylight that brings soft, indirect daylight into the upper galleries.