Her Roman Empire

Seventeen floors up, across from the Vegas behemoth that bears her name, Elaine Wynn is charting a major cultural future for America's casino capital, and she's doing it from a Michael Smith-designed oasis in the middle of the neon desert.

- CHRISTINA BINKLEY

‘There’s nothing like a call from Elaine,” says Michael Govan. Elaine is Elaine Wynn, and Govan, CEO and executive director of the largest art museum in the west, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), was reminiscing about the time some years ago when she called Senator Harry Reid to urge him to get behind a new national monument outside Las Vegas. President Barack Obama was soon signing legislation for the 704,000-acre Basin and Range National Monument.

Then, last year, while she was calling on Nevada’s governor to discuss education funding, Wynn walked out with a little something extra: a pledge of $5 million to build the new Las Vegas Museum of Art, to which Govan has promised to open LACMA’s vast collection in an unprecedented partnership. That contribution jumpstarted a $200 million capital campaign that will pave the way for a major, 90,000-square-foot cultural institution to open by 2028 minutes from the glittering Strip, a thoroughfare Wynn herself has defined. That’s just one reason they call her the First Lady of Las Vegas.