Lack of Culture in Las Vegas

It's no secret that the only culture to be found in Las Vegas is in the yogurt; the question is "Why is this so?"

I cannot think of another city of its size (almost 2 million in metropolitan area) which does so little to support the arts.

Oh well, there's always Penn and Teller.

Have you been to the Fremont East area lately? I'm guessing not....

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Have you been to the Fremont East area lately? I'm guessing not....

Shirley, you jest.

Quote: MrV

It's no secret that the only culture to be found in Las Vegas is in the yogurt; the question is "Why is this so?"

It's no secret that people who don't know much about an area and want to start finding out about a field like culture often start by looking at institutions of higher education in their new region. Here is one pertinent example: unlv

Quote: MrV

It's no secret that the only culture to be found in Las Vegas is in the yogurt; the question is "Why is this so?"

I'm born and raised in New York City, and my late father was a music critic for the New York Times. He also won the Burns prize for musical composition as a classical composer. My twin brother Robert is a pianist, and my sister is a artist with a Ph. D. in Art history who lives in Switzerland. I am a graduate of the High School of Performing arts in New York City, where I played oboe, and I studied with the principal oboist of the New York Metropolitan Opera house orchestra, William Arrowsmith.

I was exposed to it all in terms of Art, Classical music, cinema, etc., as well as to pompous asses who talk about culture like they know it, or have any.

Currently I am a dice dealer (of all things) and a casino game designer who lives in Las Vegas, afer being a career software engineer (on Unisys mainframe equipment) for twenty years. I also taught High School math here in LV for a while.

Culture is what you read, write and do, and what you carry out. It is also what you seek out and find no matter where you are. It is not where you live.

In this day and age of the Internet, of easy travel, of instant communications, it is what you fill your life with, what you read, and how you spend your free time.
Paris, New York, Moscow, London, and Chicago are filled with some of the world's worst ghettos also.

You can also google "culture Las vegas" and at least pull up the wiki entry on LV culture, which is a good starting point for what the city has to offer, no matter how pompous a biased response may be.

Basically, its entry is:
[edit] Culture and the arts
The "First Friday" celebration, held on the first Friday of each month, exhibits the works of local artists and musicians in an area just south of downtown, now called the "Arts District".[19]
The Southern Nevada Zoological-Botanical Park, also known as the Las Vegas Zoo, exhibits over 150 species of animals and plants.
The Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay is the only aquarium that is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in the state of Nevada. It features over 2,000 animals and 1,200 species in 1.6 million gallons of seawater.
The $485 million Smith Center for the Performing Arts (currently under construction) will be located downtown in Symphony Park. The center will be appropriate for Broadway shows and other major touring attractions as well as orchestra, opera, and dance performances.
Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art is a facility presenting high-quality art exhibitions from major national and international museums. Past exhibits have included the works of Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, and Peter Carl Fabergé. A self-guided audio tour is also offered. The nearby CityCenter complex also includes several public art displays that are scattered throughout the complex.
The Las Vegas Natural History Museum features robot dinosaurs, live fish, and more than 26 species of preserved animals. There are several "hands-on" areas where animals can be petted.
The Atomic Testing Museum, affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, houses artifacts from the Nevada Test Site and records the dramatic history of the atomic age through a series of interactive modules, timelines, films, and actual equipment and gadgets from the site.
[edit] Festivals
• CineVegas
• Helldorado Days
• Electric Daisy Carnival
• Las Vegas Bike Fest
• Las Vegas Music Festival
• Feast of San Gennaro
• Las Vegas Pride Festival
• The Dam Short Film Festival[nb1 1]
• Vegoose
• Las Vegas Annual World Folk Festival
[edit] Gardens
• Alan Bible Botanical Garden
• Ethel M Botanical Cactus Garden
• Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens
• The Gardens at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve
• UNLV Arboretum
[edit] Libraries
• Architecture Studies Library
• Boulder City Public Library
• Community College of Southern Nevada Libraries
• Henderson District Public Libraries
• Las Vegas-Clark County Library District
• Lied Library
• North Las Vegas Library District
[edit] Museums
• Atomic Testing Museum
• Burlesque Hall of Fame
• Clark County Heritage Museum
• Erotic Heritage Museum
• Guinness World of Records
• Star Trek: The Experience
• Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum
• Imperial Palace Auto Collection
• Las Vegas Art Museum
• Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement
• Las Vegas Natural History Museum
• Liberace Museum
• Lied Discovery Children's Museum
• Lost City Museum[nb1 1]
• Madame Tussauds
• Marjorie Barrick Museum
• Neon Museum
• Nevada State Museum
• Nevada State Railroad Museum
• Pinball Hall of Fame
• Shelby Museum
• Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art
[edit] Parks and Attractions
• Acacia Demonstration Gardens
• The Amanda & Stacy Darling Memorial Tennis Center
• Bettye Wilson Soccer Complex
• Clark County Shooting Park
• Clark County Wetlands Park
• Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs
• Hoover Dam[nb1 1]
• Lake Mead National Recreation Area[nb1 1]
• Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area
• Splash Canyon[20]
• Spring Mountains National Recreation Area[nb1 1]
• Sunset Park
[edit] Theaters
• Huntridge Theater
• Lance Burton Theatre
• Las Vegas Little Theater
• Theatre for the Performing Arts
[edit] Wildlife
• Southern Nevada Zoological-Botanical Park
• Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay
• Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat

Quote: Paigowdan

Culture is what you read, write and do, and what you carry out. It is also what you seek out and find no matter where you are. It is not where you live.

Translation: The cultural options in Vegas suck.

But thats about to change.

"The $485 million Smith Center for the Performing Arts (scheduled for completion in 2012) is located downtown in Symphony Park. The center will host Broadway shows and other major touring attractions as well as orchestra, opera, and dance performances."

Quote: EvenBob

Translation: The cultural options in Vegas suck.

No - pompous asses with no culture see no culture and have no culture and cry "no culture."
That's different.

Edit; It doesn't matter where you are, as in what city (to a degree), it matters what you seek out, what you practice, and what you contribute.
There are a lot of people in New York City with absolutely no culture who think they have culture by virtue of living in New York City.

Quote: Paigowdan

I'm born and raised in New York City, and my late father was a music critic for the New York Times. He also won the Burns prize for musical composition as a classical composer. My twin brother Robert is a pianist, and my sister is a artist with a Ph. D. in Art history who lives in Switzerland. I am a graduate of the High School of Performing arts in New York City, where I played oboe, and I studied with the principal oboist of the New York Metropolitan Opera house orchestra, William Arrowsmith.

Impressive, Dan! I wanted to take up oboe as a youngster, but my dad refused. He said, "Why would you want to take up such a useless instrument?"

So I took up accordion. To each his own.

In my family, we were allowed to study and become musicians, artists, etc. , which is very unusual and fortunate, and my siblings took advantage of that, and are artsy types. Add to this: my mother was a psychoanalyst. A real liberal, artsy New York west-side thing going. The accordion would have been fine, also, if a master of music on it.

I was practical, and honest had interest and passion for computers and nerdy stuff: my keyboard was a computer keyboard and had QWERTY on it.
My family wasn't critical of that; it was that the arts were an option. No bougeois pressure to be a doctor, lawyer, etc.
I liked immensely, almost loved, mainframe systems programming.
It was when I left data processing and moved to Vegas that they said, "Huh??"

But I got the last laugh...my mom, nearing 80, got tired of the pretense, the expense, the cold weather, the snobbery, etc., and retired to a middle-class suburban community in Huntsville, Alabama. All I can say is "Wow..." My brother went also, bought a house, works as a musician for the Catholic Diocese there. He is an expert on sacred music and music of the liturgy, which was also one of my father's strong musical areas.

Quote: MrV

I cannot think of another city of its size (almost 2 million in metropolitan area) which does so little to support the arts.

You must be very well versed in funding. I wouldn't know offhand how much the Las Vegas Philharmonic is funded verses the Kansas City symphony, Also NYC is composed of several sections that are over 2 million people (like Brooklyn and Queens and parts of Northern NJ). Do you know all the cultural events at these cities or the level of funding.


1.95 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA
2.04 Kansas City, MO-KS MSA
2.08 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH MSA
2.13 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN MSA
2.13 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL MSA
2.14 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX MSA
2.15 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA MSA
2.23 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA MSA
2.36 Pittsburgh, PA MSA
2.54 Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO MSA
2.71 Baltimore-Towson, MD MSA
2.78 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL MSA
2.81 St. Louis, MO-IL MSA
3.10 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA MSA
3.32 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI MSA
3.44 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA MSA
4.19 Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ MSA
4.22 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA MSA
4.30 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI MSA
4.34 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA MSA
4.55 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH MSA
5.27 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA MSA
5.56 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL MSA
5.58 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV MSA
5.95 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX MSA
5.97 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD MSA
6.37 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX MSA
9.46 Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI MSA
12.83 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA MSA
18.90 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA MSA

Doesn't Las Vegas have the reputation as a place that builds facades of iconic buildings and images? Or would glorify the biggest diamond over the finest? Or guys with heavy gold chains who can buy the finest art, but don't know it from toilet paper?

That's the stereotype I have in my head. At any rate, fair or not, there are a few of other cities people generally think of for culture before Vegas.

I always think of Vegas as having a culture, but more a grand vision of debauchery, than a ballet.

Quote: Paigowdan

Culture is what you read, write and do, and what you carry out. It is also what you seek out and find no matter where you are. It is not where you live.

In this day and age of the Internet, of easy travel, of instant communications, it is what you fill your life with, what you read, and how you spend your free time.
Paris, New York, Moscow, London, and Chicago are filled with some of the world's worst ghettos also.

Well said. And I live in Kansas.

I am quite familiar with the cultural offerings of my home town, a city of comparable size to Las Vegas, and it ain't even close.

Las Vegas is a cultural desert compared to Portland, which has a vibrant art scene.

Again, I ask: why?

Quote: MrV

Las Vegas is a cultural desert compared to Portland,

Ah, Portland, homeless capital of the US. Also home to
the stars of Gold Rush Alaska, former motel slumlords
Jack and Todd Hoffman. Yes, Portland has it all..

Quote: MrV

Again, I ask: why?

It is because of our cultural perceptions and arrogance over the availibility of sources, and funding of sources.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against funding of the arts, as I am for it, but believe me, I do not judge a population or a city based on the number of museums or symphony halls or off-broadway theaters. I judge it on the number of ghettos and morons it has.

Most - virtually all - of the classical music people listen to is from records, radio, and CD's.
Most of the knowledge of art comes from study of it, reading books, and on RARE occasions, working in your artist's studio; study of art is now done via the Internet on hi-res monitors.

Mr. V, The cultural deserts that people claim they see actually stem from within.

I am a patron of the arts.

My focus is original paintings, preferably watercolors.

Portland and the Oregon coast offer myriad galleries to choose from.

What does Las Vegas offer?

Quote: EvenBob

Ah, Portland... home to
the stars of Gold Rush Alaska, former motel slumlords
Jack and Todd Hoffman. Yes, Portland has it all..

Sandy, Oregon has the Hoffmans.

Portland has a vibrant art scene.

Please make a note of it.

>It's no secret that the only culture to be found in Las Vegas is in the yogurt; the question is "Why is this so?"
They used to say that about Los Angeles. And maybe a few other places too.

>I cannot think of another city of its size (almost 2 million in metropolitan area) which does so little to support the arts.
Arts funding is varied and usually seems to consist of some family's tax-dodge foundation giving money in return for publicity. It seems about as artistic as all these corporate ads on public television.

Some group is always going to be complaining. In a city where there are so many bartenders, waitresses, valet parkers, bell men, dishwashers, line cooks, hookers, pimps and housekeepers, I don't think there will be much opera funding. Opera? How about the Soap Opera of watching slot machine degenerates or hookers.

Yeah, I know: Vegas also has computer programmers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, plumbers, ... its not just a sea of taxis, strip clubs and hookers but lets face it: with all those billboards and porn slappers, do you really think anyone cares about some orchestra?
America has always sold more salted peanuts than caviar, so don't go to a ball park and complain about the lack of caviar. Don't go to Vegas and complain about a lack of anything. Vegas is an amusement park. Vegas is South Central Los Angeles with Casinos. Its not South Central Los Angeles with a Philharmonic!


>Oh well, there's always Penn and Teller.
Who?

Quote: MrV

I am a patron of the arts.

Gotta love it. I heard this a thousand times, more usually in the form of:
"I am a patron of the fine arts," pronounced "fein aurts." Part of the reason why I left New York, along with:

"Don't you know that New York is the center of the Universe??!!" And you're moving to Las Vegas - a cultural waste land - it has no Fein Aurts!!

Coversations were so falsely pretentious at times it sounded like dialogue from a Woody Allen movie ("Death in Venice" et al)

My sister has her watercolors shown in museums (Skowhegan, and Brooklyn Museum among some shows), in addition to countless galleries. People buy her peices because they appreciate her artwork, others just to be declared patrons of the fine arts, a huge difference.
She never said in her life, "well! I am a patron of the fine arts," out of respect and an outright refusal to ever belittle anyone through a sense of arrogance after achievement. At most she says, "I paint. that's what I do and love."

For that matter, tonight, the dice dealer (me) went to play Pai Gow poker at the East Side Cannery with my friend Andy, a floorman at Fiesta. Just a quiet Tuesday night out at the casino. The pit had three open and jammed up EZ pai Gow tables, and Andy and I had to cram for seats on a Pai Gow variant game that I designed; it was one table out of 54 installs in nine States with no returns, and one of nine at the Cannery Group who is 100% EZ pai Gow. People betting green and black action. Do you think I was saying, 'Hey, people! I invented this Pai Gow variant!" No, I looked at my cards and said, "sh]t, I got a pair of 3's with a QJ top AND I pressed my bet...hope the dealer gets a Pai gow" and I set my hand. Nobody playing my game knew who the hell I was, aside from Andy, and it was a non-issue. I am a gambler, and was just interested in getting a Full House with black in action, I couldn't care less if the chinese guy next to me betting $500 a hand knew if I was the patent-holder of this gaming product he was playing. I don't think he would have cared otherwise.

Musicians generally never say "I am a patron of the fine arts." They say, "I'm a violinist," or "I play an instrument." My brother goes skeet shooting with fancy music professor and violinist from Athens, Georgia (Lauren S.); he plays with major symphony orchestras, AND he goes skeet shooting, plays poker, and drives a pick-up truck with Georgia plates.

If you had studied the arts, or appreciate the arts, how are you supposed to carry yourself? Like a regular man or a pompous man? Who stands up and utters, - verbalizes: "I am a patron of the fine arts!" waiting for a reaction. How do you answer to that? Like Tommy Chong: "Yeah, man, okay, you're a patron of the fine arts, I can dig it, man, good for you..." Either you know an area of study and interest and enjoy it as a personal outlet, or you don't, but it is done for the self
.
There are a lot of great shows here in town (I enjoy the Blue Man group, Cirque, Jerry Seinfeld at Caesars, Penn and Teller, and I don't feel I have to apologize for that. for that matter, I also consider Woody Allen's films a valid part of Culture. There are also fine comedy clubs, off-broad shows, and a collection of the finest restaurants in the world here. If you've ever dined in a private dining room at Wing Lei's, you'd know this is some serious epicurean culture here in town. To be frank, I've enjoyed some of these Vegas shows more than some of the pretentious off-brodway stuff I've seen on dates in New York years back.

Generally, when I hear someone announce those words of self-promotion, "I am a patron of the fine arts!" I find the comment useless and arrogant. A true patron does not advertise if he's in with a crowd of his own, and doesn't announce when he transverses a more "pedestrian" crowd either.

I stopped being a patron of the art fine decades ago, and as to what I enjoy and how I spend my time, I choose what I think I'd like to see, and call them as I see them in a frank fashion. I do sometimes serve and enjoy wine with cheses with classical music playing, though, in a nod to pretense.

Quote: MrV

I am a patron of the arts.

My focus is original paintings, preferably watercolors.

Portland and the Oregon coast offer myriad galleries to choose from.

What does Las Vegas offer?

I take that to mean that you enjoy the arts, attend functions and support the arts. I see no arrogance or pompousness in that statement whatsoever. Where would the arts be without patrons?

Quote: 1BB

I take that to mean that you enjoy the arts, attend functions and support the arts. I see no arrogance or pompousness in that statement whatsoever. Where would the arts be without patrons?

Thank you.

I visit museums and galleries, purchase / collect art, and attend musical performances.

Not really "snooty:" I also gamble, but not in Portland (no casinos allowed).

I do enjoy the art on display at Las Vegas casinos; it is almost as if the casino owners are throwing it out there as a sop, saying "Sorry for all the casinos taking away the heart and soul of this city, but maybe this will help."

*Wynn careening into and damaging his Picasso: now THAT should have made it onto youtube*

Or did it ... madmogulmanglesmasterpiece

Quote: Paigowdan

My late father was a music critic for the New York Times.

If he is Steve Lubin, the guy who built his own fortepiano, he wasn't truly a music critic like Schonberg, Henahan or Holland and Crutchfield. He contributed some feature writing and was highly praised in more than two score reviews of his performances.