In 2014, the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas declined to partner with, host, or even exhibit the Liberace Museum Collection.
In 2019, the City of Las Vegas declined to involve itself in the celebration of Liberace’s 100th anniversary.
Receiving a warmer welcome outside our home environs, the Liberace Museum Collection, over the next few years, made headlines exhibiting at top museums and museum events elsewhere, including the Paris Museum of Modern Art, Monte Carlo Fashion Week, The New York MET and the MET Gala, The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and The Wick in Miami. At the same time we licensed, and Liberace artifacts were loaned to the 2019 Grammy awards and the 2020 Oscars. We hosted music videos including for Carlos Santana, and streaming television including VH1’s Behind the Music.
Liberace’s image, name, and videos were licensed for Snoop Dogg’s From the Streets to the Suites, the Jim Gaffigan Show, Mozart in the Jungle, and major motion pictures including Bladerunner 2049 and Rocket Man. We made licensing deals as diverse at Family Guy and Adidas, achieving recognition not seen since the life of Liberace. The Collection played host to music celebrities including Boy George and Culture Club, Chloe Flower, Carlos Santana, Questlove, Tyga, YG, Styx, Steve Stevens, Michael Ball, and others. Private tours of the Liberace Museum Collection became the highest rated Las Vegas museum attraction on trip advisor, bringing us other celebrities including Dorit Kemsley, Gretchen Rossi, Slade Smiley, China Chow, the Bella Twins, Lawrence Gowan, Chuck Panozzo, countless industry professionals and thousands of Las Vegas visitors.
In 2022 we were turned away again in the City of Las Vegas, this time in our attempted street naming in honor of Liberace. But in 2023, thirty-five years after Liberace’s passing, Clark County stepped up, re-naming a major thoroughfare “Liberace Avenue,” thanks to Clark County Commissioners Tick Segerblom and Ross Miller. Soon after, we signed a deal to license the re-opening of Liberace’s Tivoli Gardens restaurant at its original location, fully restored.
Then, we got a call from a new face at the Nevada State Museum.
Josef Diaz, a freshly-minted Las Vegan and renowned New Mexico exhibits curator, who had signed on as Nevada State Museum’s new Curator of History, wanted his first exhibit to be Liberace. At long last, Mr. Showmanship is invited home.
Now, witness the collaboration of the Nevada State Museum ambitious new team with the Liberace Foundation, in “Liberace: Real and Beyond” opening at the Nevada State Museum at the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, June 24, 2023 to December 31, 2023. We are most appreciative of Nevada State Museum, and especially the vision of Josef Diaz, for providing us this opportunity to collaborate. This represents largest museum loan, and the only Nevada museum exhibit loaned from the Liberace Museum Collection, in over a decade.
