Elaine Wynn, the beloved ‘Queen of Las Vegas’, built a singular art collection where ‘everything is the best of its kind’

Glamour. Grace. Generosity. The hospitality entrepreneur, arts patron and philanthropist Elaine Wynn is remembered for her heart as much as for her style. Growing up in New York City and Miami Beach, Wynn moved during the late 1960s to Nevada, where she became known as the ‘Queen of Las Vegas.’ In her adopted city, as well as in Los Angeles and throughout America, she played a vital role in advocating for education and the arts.

One of the many institutions she supported was the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where in 1989 she donated a rose garden in honour of her mother. Inscribed on a commemorative stone in the Lee Pascal Memorial Rose Garden is the opening line of John Keats’s Endymion (1818): ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’ Living the adage, Wynn surrounded herself with exquisite art and objects from across the globe. Fundamentally believing the enjoyment of beauty should not be a solitary experience, she simultaneously sought opportunities to share art with others and create a lasting impact. With tenacity and an impeccable eye for beauty, Wynn developed a reputation — and an art collection — that preceded her.

Elaine Wynn: the collector

In addition to raising her two daughters, Kevyn and Gillian, and being the grandmother to seven grandchildren, Wynn’s crowning achievements may very well include building an exceptional art collection. ‘Elaine was incredibly passionate. When an artwork she wanted became available, she went for it,’ says Christie’s Deputy Chairman Sonya Roth, who calls the late collector a ‘friend, mentor and role model.’ In 2013, Wynn made history when she won Francis Bacon’s 1969 triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud at Christie’s for $142.4 million — at the time, the highest price an artwork had ever achieved at auction.

Wynn’s collecting journey, which began in the 1980s, was something she enjoyed alongside her daughters. Drawn to what moved her, Wynn collected works spanning the 19th through 21st centuries. ‘The joy and thrill my mother experienced when she acquired a painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner or Francis Bacon was no different than the joy and thrill she experienced back in the ’80s when her purchases were more modest,’ says Gillian Wynn. ‘She was a true lover of art and a collector guided by that love. Her pursuits were always driven by authenticity, an uncompromising adherence to the voice of her heart and soul.’ Kevyn Wynn continues, ‘Our mother lived a life filled with passion, conviction and grace. She had uncompromising standards and we have every confidence that Christie’s will uphold her vision and legacy.’

This November, Christie’s will present a selection of Wynn’s beloved masterpieces in Elaine: The Collection of Elaine Wynn during the 20th and 21st Century Art auctions in New York. Coming from Wynn’s Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York homes, the artworks, which include paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Joan Mitchell and Fernand Léger as well as Georges Seurat, Henri Matisse and Wayne Thiebaud, chart the transition from Realism to Impressionism and subsequent modern art movements and schools. A dedicated lifelong collector, Wynn also acquired works by many of today’s preeminent talents, including Olga de Amaral, Jenny Holzer, El Anatsui, Adrian Ghenie, Jim Hodges, and Lauren Halsey.

‘There’s such range, but everything is the best of its kind, and every single object rewards and challenges the senses, whether in the strength and contrast of colour or the rich, varied texture,’ says Christie’s Vice Chairman Max Carter. ‘The collection is bookended by masterpieces from the towering figures of British painting in the 19th and 20th century: an inner circle Turner landscape and Freud’s culminant self-portrait. The two were juxtaposed in her unforgettable dining room.’

Must-see works from Elaine Wynn’s collection

The earliest work in Wynn’s collection is a late masterpiece by J.M.W. Turner, whom Matisse called ‘the link between tradition and Impressionism.’ This also marks the first time a work by the English Romantic painter is being offered in the 20th Century Evening sale at Christie’s. Ehrenbreitstein, or The Bright Stone of Honour and the Tomb of Marceau, from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was first shown in an 1835 exhibition at the Royal Academy and has been exhibited widely for centuries.

During the last three decades of his career, Turner travelled throughout Europe, including extensively around Germany. Rhineland, in particular, provided Turner with endless inspiration, as illustrated in numerous watercolours. This rare painting depicts a passage from Canto III of Lord Byron’s early 19th-century epic poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, about a young disillusioned man who, during a pilgrimage to foreign lands, seeks solace in nature.

Bridging American abstraction with French tradition, Joan Mitchell’s Sunflower V (1969) offers a very different expression of the natural world. After moving to Vétheuil, a small village outside Paris, during the late 1960s, Mitchell found one of her most fruitful subjects amongst the gardens on her property. ‘Sunflowers are something I feel intensely. They look so wonderful when young and they are so very moving when they are dying’, Mitchell said of the bloom, which she’d revisit frequently throughout her career. The sunflower, rendered vibrantly here in Mitchell’s energetic brushstrokes, connected her to Vincent van Gogh, whom she deeply admired.

Wynn also acquired a masterpiece from one of Richard Diebenkorn’s most iconic series. ‘Ocean Park #40 (1971) is simply one of post-war America’s most beautiful paintings. Its prior owners, S.I. Newhouse and Anne Marion, like Elaine, had intensely personal aesthetic visions and conviction,’ says Carter. A carefully orchestrated field of polychrome architectural forms, this monumental abstraction was made at the height of the artist’s creative power after his 1967 move to Santa Monica, California. The offered painting famously appeared on the cover of the catalogue for Diebenkorn’s first exhibition with Marlborough Gallery in 1971.

‘Elaine’s collection encapsulated many themes and genres. They weren’t always pretty — sometimes they were very tough,’ says Roth, referencing Lucian Freud’s The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer (2004-2005). Completed when the artist was 82, the work depicts the artist and his muse in his studio. As he paints, a nude young woman (Alexandra Williams-Wynn) is at his feet clutching his legs. Poet and critic Kelly Grovier described it as a ‘genre-busting masterpiece ... Part self-portrait, part nude, and part infinite regression of paintings within paintings.’ At once provocative, self-deprecating and humorous, the work was featured in major Freud retrospectives but has not been seen in public since the Centre Pompidou’s 2010 exhibition, Lucian Freud: L’Atelier.

Elaine Wynn: the humanitarian

‘When faced with any issue, Elaine’s daughter Gillian and I would ask “What would Elaine do?” because she would always do the right thing,’ says Roth. ‘She really believed in people and empowered them. She was a great supporter of women, children and anybody who felt disenfranchised.’

An ardent advocate for education, Wynn served in leadership roles at the local, state, and national levels. In addition to establishing the Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation to support community organisations, her roles included chairing the UNLV Foundation, co-chairing Nevada’s Blue Ribbon Education Reform Task Force, serving as president of the State Board of Education in Nevada, and serving on the national board of Communities in Schools, which supports underserved youth.

In addition to supporting Las Vegas’s Smith Center for the Performing Arts, Wynn was also a major supporter of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and President Barack Obama appointed her to the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2010. As one of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s greatest champions, she made indelible contributions whilst also serving as its board’s co-chair. Not only did she help fund the installation of fellow Nevadan Michael Heizer’s 340-ton boulder, Levitated Mass (2012), over a pedestrian walkway on LACMA’s campus, but she also gave a $50 million donation towards the museum’s forthcoming building for its permanent collection. LACMA’s new David Geffen galleries, whose northern wing is named after Wynn, will open in spring 2026.

In 2024, it was announced that Wynn would co-chair a partnership between LACMA and the proposed Las Vegas Museum of Art, a 90,000-square-foot building to be designed by esteemed architect Francis Kéré in Symphony Park, the city’s new arts district. Projected to open in 2028, the museum will fill a crucial gap, as Las Vegas is the largest city in America to not have an art museum. For Wynn, access to education and art was always at the fore. ‘The things I do, I do because they’re deep passions of mine’, Wynn once said. ‘If I’m invested I’m all the way in.’ It’s with that same commitment and fervour that Wynn built her unparalleled art collection.