The Liberace Museum

Living in Las Vegas is a lot like living abroad. Every single day you are bombarded with the unfamiliar, bizarre and surreal. After an outing into the mayhem, a retreat is often necessary, so one can gather one's thoughts. And so it was with the Liberace Museum. It took awhile to process!

Liberace was a man who didn't believe there was such a thing as "Too Much". His collection of glittering cars, crystal studded pianos, and intricately beaded costumes show no signs of restraint, and that's what makes it all so much fun.


The museum itself isn't very large and is divided into two buildings on opposite sides of a forlorn strip mall. (Oddly, everything that is off the Strip is in a strip mall in this town, can someone explain that?) My favorite part of the display were the costumes, hands down.



There are some incredible concoctions on view here- each one more intricately be-feathered, rhinestone lined, ruffled or trimmed in endangered monkey fur than the last.


Some of the costumes weighed more than 100 pounds. Can you imagine performing under the glaring lights in pre air-conditioned Vegas in 100 pounds of rhinestones, lace and feathers? The man was dedicated to his bling, I'll give him that.



We went along on one of the guided tours and, if you visit, I'd tactfully recommend against doing so. Let's just say that the tour guide was enamored of her subject- so enamored that she assumed we all knew as much about the man as she. This assumption (in our case, quite false. We had to look him up on you tube and wikipedia upon arriving home.) led her to focus on minutiae for long rambling swaths of time. We politely broke away from the group to snap a photo of the Fab Miss B with cardboard cutouts instead.



Take a peek at this super campy video which served as his opening during his tenure at the Hilton. You probably can't take six whole minutes, but the opening tour through his house is awfully fun. (You get to see him in a bubble bath!)