LAs

The Las Vegas Museum of Art has revealed new key details of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Diébédo Francis Kéré’s design for the city’s first freestanding museum, which is expected to break ground in 2027.

The earthy red structure will feature a facade of locally sourced stone, and was inspired by the canyons and red rock landscape that stretches beyond the brash, man-made playground of Sin City, Kéré said in an interview alongside the museum’s executive director, Heather Harmon.

“How can I use what is surrounding Las Vegas to create something open and welcoming?” he said. “We started to think about the subtle beauty of the nature, and to bring it into the core of the museum.”

Renderings of the structure, which is situated in Symphony Park, show a cubed modernist building with a large awning that stretches over a bustling entry plaza to provide shade. A curved grand entrance staircase spirals through the center of the museum and is visible from the building’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Cloistered second-floor galleries are meant to provide a peaceful sanctuary for taking in the art.

A concept sketch for the Las Vegas Museum of Art by architect Diébédo Francis Kéré.

(Diébédo Francis Kéré / Las Vegas Museum of Art)

Architect Paul R. Williams’ Guardian Angel Cathedral, which opened in the city in 1963, is cited as a design influence, as are the singular stocky trunk baobab trees of the African savanna. Kéré was born in the village of Gando in the West African country of Burkina Faso, and noted that although the natural environment of his home country is quite different from that of Las Vegas, he was able to find many design parallels for inspiration.

Kéré, who is also a professor at Yale in New Haven, Conn., has made many trips to Las Vegas over the last few years, and received personalized tours of the city and its natural surroundings from Harmon and Elaine Wynn, a museum board member and philanthropist who died in April.

They went to the Valley of Fire State Park, which features fantastical sandstone formations the same color as the museum’s renderings. They also saw various quarries as well as the Hoover Dam. In the city, they visited the west side, which is rooted in the city’s rich African American history, as well as Ward 3 on the east side, which is home to a large Latino population.

“We looked at community spaces, we looked at people in community spaces,” said Harmon. “And we really wanted to have that feeling of understanding as we approached the project — just knowing firsthand who we were building the museum for.”

The 60,000-square-foot building is expected to welcome more than 2.4 million year-round Las Vegas residents, as well as millions of global tourists. The museum is expected to cost about $200 million, including its endowment. The target opening date is in 2029.

Last year, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced it would share its collection with the Vegas museum, which does not have plans to become a collecting institution. LACMA director and LVMA founding trustee Michael Govan told The Times that the sharing arrangement is part of a paradigm shift for LACMA, allowing it to expand access to its collection without increasing the physical footprint of its home base. (Critics, including former Times art critic Christopher Knight, disagreed with the move.)

“I think that’s a very 20th century idea — to keep adding wings until you’re a million square feet on Fifth Avenue,” Govan said in an interview at the time.

L.os Angeles City Councilmember John Lee is facing a steep fine for his notorious 2017 trip to Las Vegas, with the city’s Ethics Commission saying he must pay $138,424 in a case involving pricey meals and expensive nightclub “bottle service.”

On Wednesday, the commission decided 4 to 0 that Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, committed two counts of violating the city’s gift law and three counts of violating a law requiring that such gifts be disclosed to the public.

By a 3-1 vote, the panel found that Lee violated five additional counts of misusing his city position or helping his boss at the time — Councilmember Mitchell Englander — misuse his position. After that, the commission voted unanimously to levy the maximum financial penalty, as recommended by city ethics investigators.

The commission went much further than an administrative law judge, who, after a multiday hearing, concluded that Lee violated five of 10 counts and recommended a fine of nearly $44,000.

Commission President Manjusha Kulkarni argued for the maximum fine, saying it would discourage others from violating ethics laws. She said Lee directly benefited from his decision not to report the gifts — which came from three men who sought business with City Hall — on his economic disclosure forms.

Lee, by failing to report those gifts, gained an unfair advantage during his 2019 and 2020 election campaigns, both of which he won by small margins, Kulkarni said.

“There was a concealment effort made there in order to win those two elections,” she said.

Commissioner Aryeh Cohen voted against the five additional ethics counts, saying he wasn’t convinced that the gift information would have made a difference. Last year, after city investigators accused Lee of violating gift laws, he won reelection handily.

“Voters knew, and he won by a larger margin” than in 2019 or 2020, Cohen said. “So I don’t think that that was a misuse of a position or gaining benefit from it.”

Brian Hildreth, an attorney representing Lee, had argued for a maximum fine of $10,000. Appearing before the commission, he said city investigators incorrectly calculated the value of the gifts and failed to take into account how much Lee had actually consumed at the food and drink venues.

Lee, in a statement, vowed to keep fighting the charges, calling the case “wasteful and political.” An appeal would need to be filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

“Today is but one step in the process of fighting these baseless charges,” he said. “I look forward to finally having an opportunity to have this matter adjudicated in a fair and impartial setting.”

The Lee case revolves around gifts — mostly meals and alcohol but also hotel stays, transportation and $1,000 in gambling chips — provided by the three businessmen: Andy Wang, who peddled Italian cabinets, “smart home” technology and facial recognition software; architect and developer Chris Pak; and lobbyist Michael Bai.

Lee, while working as Englander’s chief of staff, flew with his boss and several others — including Wang and Bai — to Las Vegas in 2017. Englander resigned from office the following year, after being contacted by FBI agents about the trip.

In 2020, federal prosecutors accused Englander of accepting $15,000 in cash from Wang, lying to FBI agents and obstructing their investigation. He eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of providing false information to the FBI and was sentenced to 14 months in prison.

In 2023, Englander agreed to pay $79,830 to settle an Ethics Commission case focused on his own gift law violations. That same year, the commission filed a case against Lee, saying he violated the gift law not just in Vegas but also at restaurants in downtown L.A. and Koreatown.

Lee repeatedly denied the allegations and argued that the statute of limitations had run out. The commission responded by scheduling a multiday hearing, held in June before Administrative Law Judge Ji-Lan Zang.

During those proceedings, Lee said he made a good faith effort to pay his own way and, in some cases, declined to eat during meals. For example, he testified that he did not remember eating during the meetings at Yxta Cocina Mexicana and Water Grill, both in downtown L.A.

Zang, in her written report to the commission, called those denials “not credible,” saying it “strains credulity” to believe that he would join the group at those restaurants without eating any food.

During the Las Vegas trip, Lee stayed at the Aria hotel, went to Blossom restaurant and spent an evening with the group at Hakkasan Nightclub.

At Blossom, Wang ordered a dinner worth nearly $2,500 that included shark fin soup, Peking duck and Kobe beef. Lee testified over the summer that he arrived at the restaurant in time for a dessert of bird’s nest soup, tasting it and deciding he did not like it.

At Hakkasan Nightclub later that night, Wang purchased three rounds of bottle service for the group for around $8,000 apiece, while Pak purchased a fourth round for $8,418.75.

Lee said he gave Wang $300 in cash as reimbursement for his drinks, withdrawing money from an ATM. Hildreth, his attorney, told the commission that drinks were served to a large number of nightclubgoers.

“The testimony and the evidence suggests that dozens and dozens of people were joining Councilmember Lee and others,” he said.

Kulkarni, before the vote, said she was especially troubled that Lee, after being contacted by FBI agents in 2017, sent Wang a backdated check for $442 to reimburse him for some of the Vegas trip. That act on its own, she said, constituted “a very serious offense.”

“That is not a mistake that one does. That is an affirmative act,” she said.

Hildreth said his client wrote a reimbursement check right away but that it was lost, necessitating a second, backdated check. He also noted that Lee cooperated with federal law enforcement and city ethics investigators.

“He sat for two interviews with the FBI,” Hildreth said. “That’s not something that deserves a punitive penalty.”

There is nowhere on Earth quite like Las Vegas, and when you add in the chaos of 200mph supercars whizzing down the Strip, it takes the mad place to another level

Whoever coined New York ‘the city that never sleeps’ had clearly never been to Las Vegas. Certainly not in Formula 1 week.

When the glitz and glamour of the world’s fastest sport meets the sheer chaos of the world’s craziest city – it takes it to another level. Las Vegas is like nowhere else on the planet. From the moment you touch down in this metropolis of Nevada after a lengthy 10-and-a-half-hour flight from the UK, any thoughts of jet lag are consigned to the back of your mind.

The sights and sounds of Sin City are quite literally designed to keep you awake and, more pertinently, keep you spending. From arriving at the mighty Caesars Palace, where the Nobu hotel provided my base for the stay, I was met with a countless array of gambling machines and tables, which are occupied 24 hours a day.

Numerous casinos on the world-famous Strip even have an artificial blue sky on the ceilings. With no clocks or open windows, gamblers could be forgiven for losing track of time, whether they are winning or losing.

And with an extra 150,000 people in the city for the Grand Prix, Vegas took on a new lease of life. This isn’t like visiting Silverstone or Brands Hatch. There is no purpose-built Formula 1 track. Instead, Las Vegas Boulevard shuts down to regular traffic for the weekend, meaning you need your walking boots to get around the hotels, casinos, bars, and restaurants.

Handily, with the main attractions all in close proximity, that is possible. But even so, I was walking up to 30,000 steps a day in order to experience everything this bustling hub of activity had to offer. I was lucky enough to be given a guided tour of the track two days before the race, ahead of the drivers heading out for their practice session.

It was an opportunity to get up close and personal with the sport’s biggest stars, their cars, and the thousands of staff in the pit lane, while being walked through the unique challenges each corner presents.

I witnessed a practice pit stop and gained a unique insight into the pressures on not only the drivers but also each staff member to execute the perfect race-day strategy.

It was then time to head to F1 Arcade to try my hand behind the wheel in a simulator. Thankfully, unlike those out on the track, I was able to select a setting more suitable to my level of expertise, and crashing the car into the barrier at top speeds meant simply hitting restart and having another go.

At the race itself, the adrenaline rush of seeing these supercars whizz past at speeds of over 200mph genuinely takes your breath away. And nowhere is it more fitting than with an incredible backdrop of the Vegas skyline, including the unmistakable Sphere.

Opening in September 2003 with a residency from Irish rockers U2, the Sphere is one of the world’s craziest and most novel entertainment venues and a must-see on any visit to Vegas. In addition to staging concerts, the venue also serves as a 360-degree, fully immersive cinema. I saw the 1930s classic, The Wizard of Oz, originally shot for a 4:3 movie screen.

To see this vintage piece of cinema being brought into the 21st century, complete with effects including fog, wind, and objects falling from the sky into your lap, is an experience to behold.

Another key pillar of the Las Vegas entertainment circuit is the various Cirque du Soleil shows available at numerous venues on the Strip. One such show is ‘O’ at the Bellagio – so named because ‘eau’ is French for water.

The show provides a spectacular array of aquatic performances through a journey of love, danger, adventure and courage. In addition to acrobats, it features artistic swimmers and divers, some of whom have represented their countries at the Olympic Games.

The supremely agile and flexible performers are joined by a flying pirate ship in a stunning display of gravity-defying artistry.

Vegas boasts a vast array of food and drink options to suit a range of budgets. At the top end, the aptly named High Steaks restaurant pairs incomparable 180-degree views of the Strip with a selection of succulent meats, seafood and show-stopping desserts.

Yardbird in the Venetian Resort is a perfect spot for breakfast with their signature chicken and waffles brilliantly over-the-top in every way. Away from the chaos of the Strip, the Vegas Arts District provides the perfect opportunity to get away from the hustle and bustle and enjoy a more reserved area of this magnificent city.

Packed with quirky shops and idyllic brunch spots, it’s hard to believe you are just a stone’s throw away from the world’s capital of extravagance. But that is the allure of Las Vegas. The most brilliantly bonkers city in the world.