Frommer's Review
Forget all that stuff we said before about the great museums of the world. You can keep your Louvres and Vaticans and Smithsonians: This is a museum. Housed in a strip mall, this is a shrine to the glory and excess that was the art project known as Liberace. You've got your costumes (bejeweled), your many cars (bejeweled), your many pianos (bejeweled), and many jewels (also bejeweled). Also, the entrance itself is a giant jewel. It just shows what can be bought with lots of money and no taste.
The thing is, Liberace was in on the joke. We think. The people who come here largely aren't. Many of these guests would not have liked him living next door to them if his name was, say, Bruce Smith, but they idolize the man, the myth. Not found here is any reference to AIDS or chauffeurs who had plastic surgery to look more like him. But you will find a Czar Nicholas uniform with 22-karat-gold braiding and a blue-velvet cape styled after the coronation robes of King George V and covered with $60,000 worth of rare chinchilla. Not to mention a 50 1/2-pound rhinestone costing $50,000, the world's largest, presented to him by the grateful (we bet they were) Austrian firm that supplied all his costume stones.
The museum is now better than ever, thanks to a costly renovation that turned what was once a too-low-key exhibition, especially given the subject matter, into something much more gaudy and over-the-top -- and, better still, properly enshrined. Expect a ridiculously outrageous entrance (three words: giant pink piano) into rooms with various exhibits that finally give detailed attention to facts and figures. Admission has been cranked up, probably to pay for the renovations, but we don't mind -- this is a one-of-a-kind place, all the better thanks to a reconceived gift shop that finally understands what a lure Liberace branding is. (Think Elvis kitsch only bejeweled.) Unless you have a severely underdeveloped appreciation for camp or take your museum-going very seriously, you shouldn't miss it. The museum is 2 1/2 miles east of the Strip, on your right.
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