The Art Programme, and What It Is For

Two stories in this archive share a title, eleven years apart, which is itself a finding: Art for Art's Sake in 2010 and Art for Art's Sake again later. The subject did not go away, and what it is for changed.

An art programme is a wayfinding and dwell device

The 2010 piece records CityCenter issuing brochures for its Fine Art Program that allows visitors to travel to each significant work of art and read about the artist who created it, as well as the inspiration and reasoning behind it.

Read that as circulation design. A brochure that sends a guest from work to work is a route through a very large property, with reasons to stop. On a floor deliberately built without landmarks, commissioned art supplies them — which is the same job the ceiling does overhead.

At the top of the market it is a collection

The 2021 piece quotes Jim Gentleman of SKG Marketing on clients using public art, including the Aria, which has a significant art collection, including commissioned pieces; and the Borgata, which features the blown glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly throughout the property.

Marina Bay Sands, in Iconic and Profitable, is the most ambitious case: Not only is the building a work of art, but it houses many large-scale art installations that were commissioned from such artists as Antony Gormley, Chongbin Zheng, James Carpenter, Ned Kahn and the late Sol LeWitt. Art for Art's Sake describes Maya Lin's contribution at Aria as a vision in reclaimed silver that reflects the nearby Colorado River, hanging above Aria's front desk.

Note where it hangs. Above the front desk — the one place every arriving guest stands still.

The art has to match the customer

The Cosmopolitan's programme is the archive's clearest example of art specified from a customer profile rather than a curator's taste. Metro-Gaming: That's how our art program was set up, from the 'art-o-mat' machines to the 7-foot-tall high heel in the commons area — and the governing principle, stated immediately after: when the team was hired, it was crucial to understand who the customer was.

A vending machine dispensing artworks and a seven-foot shoe are not a compromise on seriousness. They are a decision about which audience is being flattered.

Architecture as art, and the reverse

Where budget is tight the archive tends to find the art in the building itself. Containing Culture & Costs quotes WorthGroup's Bryan Hamlin on an $11.2 million project: It's like a very contemporary sculpture that you can inhabit. At the other end, Revel's lobby piece in Best of the Boardwalk is architecture-scaled: a sculpture called "Arrivals," made up of 19,700 sparkling gold circles suspended on 650 steel cables (some 90 feet long), cascades down like a wind chime.

Where the owner owns the culture

Tribal properties produce the archive's most coherent art programmes, because the commissioning question answers itself. Building an Enterprise: There's artwork throughout the hotel that was designed by Navajo artists specifically for spaces we designed to showcase this art.

Designed to showcase it — the spaces came after the commission, not before. That sequence is rare anywhere and it is why these interiors hold together. See designing for a tribal owner.

The screen is eating the frame

The most consequential recent change is economic, and The Technology Revolution states it exactly: If you compare to even a high-cost performance video monitor to a traditional framed piece of artwork, a designer can actually cut costs when applied to an accessories portion of an interiors budget.

A screen is now cheaper than the picture it replaces, and it can be reprogrammed. The Cosmopolitan turned a structural liability into exactly that: One of the things done to take advantage of what would have been a negative was creating the video columns, which display artwork specifically designed for them, with the columns clad in a high-definition technology that creates a different atmosphere as the images change, from branding messages for the hotel to unique artwork designed by various artists.

Branding messages and commissioned artwork on the same surface is the whole argument about digital art in one sentence. It is flexible, it is cheap, it dates on a hardware cycle, and the moment it can also sell something, somebody will make it sell something.

Four questions before commissioning

1. What is the work doing — marking a decision point, holding a queue, or being photographed?
2. Who is the audience, and would they recognise the reference?
3. Who maintains it? Chihuly glass, a 650-cable sculpture and a wall of screens have three very different service contracts.
4. Is it permanent or programmable? The answer decides whether it belongs in the art budget or the technology budget.