las vegas’s first freestanding art museum
The Las Vegas Museum of Art will rise in Symphony Park as a 60,000-square-foot building designed by Kéré Architecture with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as architect of record. Planned as the city’s first freestanding art museum, the project sets out to serve a growing local population alongside an international audience drawn to Las Vegas year-round.
Located within a district already defined by cultural venues and public space, the Las Vegas Museum of Art positions itself as a civic room for the city. The museum aims to operate at the scale of its surroundings while offering a quieter register shaped by climate and material.
visualizations © Kéré Architecture, Courtesy of Las Vegas Museum of Art
kéré architecture learns from las vegas
The team at Kéré Architecture draws from the Mojave Desert and Las Vegas’s legacy of modernist design, translating both into a building with weight and texture. The exterior is wrapped in a mosaic of locally sourced stone, its tonal range echoing the Red Rock Mountains visible beyond the city.
A broad canopy projects well past the roofline, creating a shaded entry plaza that functions as a front porch for the museum. This overhang tempers the desert sun while setting a gradual transition between public ground and interior space.
the facade uses locally sourced stone that echoes the colors of the Red Rock Mountains
a museum with canyon-like interiors
Inside the Kéré Architecture-designed Las Vegas Museum of Art, a grand staircase rises through the entry level behind floor-to-ceiling glass, shaping the building’s central volume. The stair reads as a canyon carved through the plan, guiding visitors upward toward galleries positioned on the second floor.
These upper galleries appear suspended above the public base, reinforcing a sense of ascent and pause. Light enters from controlled openings, and circulation remains legible, with movement organized around this vertical core.
The galleries take cues from Paul Revere Williams’s Guardian Angel Cathedral, a long-standing place of refuge in Las Vegas. That influence appears through proportion, restraint, and an emphasis on calm interior atmospheres suited to sustained viewing.
a grand interior stair draws visitors upward through the building
the baobab tree as a recurring motif
Beyond the enclosed spaces, an outdoor sculpture plaza introduces an oasis-like condition. Landscape and architecture work together to soften the edges of the building and extend the museum experience outdoors.
The baobab tree serves as a recurring reference, informing both structure and symbolism. In this project, it suggests shelter, gathering, and continuity across generations, ideas that align with the museum’s public mission.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill serves as architect of record, supporting the delivery of Kéré’s design within the technical and regulatory framework of downtown Las Vegas. Construction is planned to move the museum toward an opening in 2029.
project info:
name: Las Vegas Museum of Art
architect: Kéré Architecture
location: Las Vegas, Nevada
architect of record: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
visualizations: © Kéré Architecture, Courtesy of Las Vegas Museum of Art