Liberace Museum closing Oct. 17

[meegbear]

One of Las Vegas’ jewel attractions, and a significant part of its cultural and entertainment history, is closing.

The Liberace Museum, which has exhibited the jewelry, pianos, garish gowns and other artifacts owned by the great pianist and showman for more than 30 years, announced today it will close effective Oct. 17. The museum opened April 15, 1979.

Liberace Foundation Board of Directors Chair Jeffrey Koep informed the staff this morning that all paid positions –- full- and part-time –- would be eliminated as of closing on that Oct. 17 date, which is a Sunday. A total of 31 employees, including 12 to 14 full-timers, will be let go, Koep said.

“This is a pretty straightforward business decision that’s basically been a long time coming,” Koep said. “The biggest thing to the board is the human beings affected, that we are going to have to get rid of our employees. … But also, we recognize what Liberace meant to the history of Las Vegas, and that makes this very difficult and sad for us.”

Sagging visitation numbers, which have led to insufficient funding to meet the attraction’s payroll and operating costs, are the stated reasons for shuttering the famous museum.

At its peak, the Liberace Museum rivaled Hoover Dam as one of the region’s most popular off-Strip tourism destinations, drawing 450,000 visitors per year. That number is closer to 50,000 today, even with an aggressive marketing effort by the museum that has helped boost raw visitor numbers through such promotions as 2-for-1 ticket packages. But actual ticket revenue has not matched even modest gains in visits to the museum.

Officials have long said that the museum has suffered as the competition from the Strip has become more enticing to tourists, and that Las Vegas residents are not compelled to visit an attraction that sits far from the city’s heaviest population bases.

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http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/blogs/kats-report/2010/sep/10/liberace-museum-closing/

Dammit! I've gone to Vegas the past few years for Smokeout at the end of March/start of April and keep wanting to check it out. Now I'll never see it. ;(

[ClassWarrior]

1. They shoulda built it in the Milwaukee area, like they were considering...

:shrug:

Just sayin. Hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?

NGU.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. They are being nice about it, but the muesum should be in

Branson, where the target audience travels, but Liberace is not the right 'image' for Branson. If you catch my drift.

[MineralMan]

2. There just aren't enough people who even remember Liberace to

keep this viable. I've been to the museum once, for a press party at a trade show. It was interesting, but I wouldn't go to it for any other reason. Even though I'm 65, Liberace was never more than a novelty act in my lifetime. This museum just isn't timely any longer.

[Warpy]

4. That's my guess

He was a big deal for the WWII generation and Generation Suck and they're all getting too far up in years to travel to Las Vegas, at all, much less to some museum off the strip.

I'm sure the eventual auction will be well attended by people with more money than taste who love kitsch, though.

[MineralMan]

5. What is Generation Suck?

If you don't mind. That's a new term to me.

[Warpy]

7. It's what I call the ones born from the 30s to the start of the Boomer years

They were the ones who came of age during the height of conformity, too old for the World War, not remembering the Depression, and too young for the 60s when the party started. They largely married right out of high school, whether they went to college or into the military, and were tied down with all the accoutrements of the American Dream when the world suddenly exploded into color and protest. Having bought the American Dream, along with going into debt to achieve it, they've had the rules changed on them many times. They're ultra conservative in the main (although there are some great Gen. Suck lefty outliers) and were the basis of Nixon's "silent majority." They want to get back to the 50s, only they think the social conformity, regimentation and segregation were the good parts, not the New Deal. Having served in a peacetime military, they never had any reason to doubt any of the military propaganda.

Having missed the party, they've always wanted to stick it to the Boomers, and they raised Gen X the same way.

I call them Gen. Suck because they did miss so much, because Suckers think desegregation was what caused their worsening economic situation, and because of the effect their conservatism has had on this country.

[MineralMan]

8. Well, that would include me, then, since I was born in 1945.

I didn't miss the 60s at all. I didn't marry right out of high school, and I marched in Selma in 1965. Perhaps you're a little off in your ageist thinking.

General categories like you mention are generally incorrect, IMO.

[Warpy]

12. What part of the parenthetical remark didn't you understand?

[MineralMan]

14. The part where you don't include it every time you

categorize that group. That's the part I didn't understand. I object to age classifications in general, since they're always limited and exceptions can always be demonstrated. It's just how I am, you see. I tend to call people on their categorization of other people. I don't like it much.

[TlalocW]

3. That's too bad because

Some comedian had the idea that after our culture was long gone, future archaeologists would dig up his museum and assume Liberace was a great ruler, and he proposed that was the case of the Pharaohs in Egypt - that they weren't rulers but once-popular musical acts.

Now that will never come true.

TlalocW

[HughBeaumont]

9. WHEW!! Just made it.

Yeah, it was pretty dead when I went. The problem lies in the presentation. For all of Liberace's glitz and glitter, the museum(s) themselves are pretty shoddy and in need of updating. Also doesn't help that it's in sort of a bad area.

Oh well, the Pinball Hall of Fame will still be around there. Visit that to feel like a kid again.

[Constance Craving]

10. So incredibly SAD . . .

My sisters and I just went there THIS summer . . . we loved it! Giggled all the way through with nothing but love and joy the whole time. I am very glad I got to see it before it closed. Now what will become of all of the lovely clothes, jewels and cars? As we were in the shuttle from the hotel to the museum, they were playing a video of one of his shows . . . he said (in that way he had) "Some people have asked how I can play the piano with all of these rings on? And I say 'very well!'" Very well indeed Lee, very well.

[revolution breeze]

11. I went with hubby and kids about 3 years ago.

It was one of the things we knew not everybody did. Kids could not beleive he was so "over the top"!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

13. "all paid positions would be eliminated"? So there were... volunteers?

:rofl:

[gmoney]

15. We could trade it to Kim Jong Il for his nuke program

I'm sure he'd go for all the bling and furs and limousines and whatnot...