Elaine Wynn, the co-founder of Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts, billionaire art collector and philanthropist, has died. She was 82.
The Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation announced her death on Tuesday. The cause of death was not immediately known.
She was born in New York City and raised in Miami Beach, but it was Las Vegas where Wynn found a longtime home — for herself, her investments and her philanthropy.
“No matter where people are or where they go, there’s no place in the world like Las Vegas,” she told Vegas Magazine in 2021. “When you think about an immediate moment of having fun and enjoying yourself — no matter how serious and weird things get — we all need to laugh and dance and watch other people sing and perform.”
She and husband Steve Wynn — the couple married twice and divorced for good in 2010 — moved there in 1967, using the money from Steve Wynn’s family bingo parlors to invest in the Frontier Hotel.
Elaine Wynn tries on earrings at the promenade at the new Encore Hotel in Las Vegas in 2008.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Ultimately, the Wynns transformed the Las Vegas Strip, notably opening the Mirage and Bellagio casino resorts, in 1989 and 1998, respectively. Elaine Wynn infused her touch of glamour on the resorts, setting the tone for luxury mega-resorts. At the time, the Bellagio was the most expensive resort ever built.
After Mirage Resorts was acquired by MGM in 2000, the couple founded Wynn Resorts Ltd. and financed Wynn Las Vegas, which opened in 2005. The sister property, Encore Las Vegas, opened in 2008.
Wynn Resorts, of which Elaine Wynn was the largest individual shareholder, issued a statement Tuesday morning. “Elaine cared deeply about the employees of our resorts,” the statement reads. “The current and former employees who worked alongside her to create Wynn and Encore Las Vegas cherish the many fond memories they have of her, especially of when they opened Wynn Las Vegas with her 20 years ago this month.”
As the statement alludes to, Wynn was known for her philanthropic spirit as much as her business ventures, especially in Las Vegas. She chaired the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation from 1985-1991, co-chaired Nevada’s Blue Ribbon Education Reform Task Force in 2011 and sat on the Nevada State Board of Education from 2012 to 2020, serving as president in 2015 and 2017. Wynn also served on the national board of Communities in Schools, an organization dedicated to encouraging children to stay in school, since 1999 and was the founding chairman of Communities in Schools of Nevada.
Wynn was also a patron of the arts. President Obama named her a trustee of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2010. She served as co-chair of Los Angeles County Museum of Art since 2015.
An avid art collector, Wynn purchased a Francis Bacon triptych of painter Lucian Freud for $142.5 million in 2013 — the most expensive artwork ever sold at the time.
In 2016, she pledged $50 million toward LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor-designed permanent collection building. Parts of the plaza around the David Geffen Galleries will open by summer; the north wing is named the Elaine Wynn Wing in honor of the trustee and board co-chair’s initial contribution.
In its statement, the Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation directed contributions in Wynn’s memory to be made to LACMA to support the building of its satellite Las Vegas Museum of Art, which is tentatively slated to open in 2028. Las Vegas is one of the largest cities in the country without an art museum.
Wynn is survived by two daughters, Kevyn and Gillian, and seven grandchildren.