‘Modern Masters’

Rumors flew that the museum inside The Venetian was in trouble. But the lull came down to nothing more than a problem getting paintings from the Hermitage in Russia to the United States for the "Modern Masters" exhibit opening today, says Guggenheim Hermitage managing director Elizabeth Herridge.

"The Hermitage could not export images for this show," Herridge says. "We had to regroup and make it an all-Guggenheim show." Because of that "it took months to put together."

Thirty-seven works by 23 artists are on display in the exhibit that runs through April 27.

Art movements including impressionism, post-impressionism, cubism, expressionism and purism are represented.

Spanning the 1870s through the 1930s, the "Modern Masters from the Guggenheim Collection" includes some of the bigger names of that era — Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Edouard Manet — and some of the lesser-known as well — Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Alexej Jawlensky, Kazimir Malevich and Franz Marc.

"This is an important section of the Guggenheim collection," Herridge says. "Solomon Guggenheim (the museum’s founder) would have started to collect then."

The show is divided into portraiture, landscape, still life and genre painting. They are four of the five categories of acceptable subject matter established by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, says Herridge. (The other is history painting.)

"There are things we have not had here before that I think are very, very significant," Herridge says.

Covering a time of change in the art of painting, the exhibit shows "the period of breaking away from the classical form," Herridge says. "That leads to where we are now. These paintings are the change agents."

The exhibit also marks a reduction in ticket prices — adults are admitted for $15; seniors, Nevada residents and students get in for $12; and children 12 and younger are admitted free. The audio guide costs $5.