Elaine Wynn, LACMA co-chair, art collector and Wynn Resorts co-founder, dies at 82

Elaine Wynn, the co-founder of Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts, billionaire creation collector and philanthropist, has died. She was 82.

The Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation announced her decease connected Tuesday. The origin of decease was not instantly known.

She was calved successful New York City and raised successful Miami Beach, but it was Las Vegas wherever Wynn recovered a longtime location — for herself, her investments and her philanthropy.

“No substance wherever radical are oregon wherever they go, there’s nary spot successful the satellite similar Las Vegas,” she told Vegas Magazine successful 2021. “When you deliberation astir an contiguous infinitesimal of having amusive and enjoying yourself — nary substance however superior and weird things get — we each request to laughter and creation and ticker different radical sing and perform.”

She and hubby Steve Wynn — the mates joined doubly and divorced for bully successful 2010 — moved determination successful 1967, utilizing the wealth from Steve Wynn’s household bingo parlors to put successful the Frontier Hotel.

Elaine Wynn tries connected earrings astatine the promenade astatine the caller Encore Hotel successful Las Vegas successful 2008.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Ultimately, the Wynns transformed the Las Vegas Strip, notably opening the Mirage and Bellagio casino resorts, successful 1989 and 1998, respectively. Elaine Wynn infused her interaction of glamour connected the resorts, mounting the code for luxury mega-resorts. At the time, the Bellagio was the astir costly edifice ever built.

After Mirage Resorts was acquired by MGM successful 2000, the mates founded Wynn Resorts Ltd. and financed Wynn Las Vegas, which opened successful 2005. The sister property, Encore Las Vegas, opened successful 2008.

Wynn Resorts, of which Elaine Wynn was the largest idiosyncratic shareholder, issued a connection Tuesday morning. “Elaine cared profoundly astir the employees of our resorts,” the connection reads. “The existent and erstwhile employees who worked alongside her to make Wynn and Encore Las Vegas cherish the galore fond memories they person of her, particularly of erstwhile they opened Wynn Las Vegas with her 20 years agone this month.”

As the connection alludes to, Wynn was known for her philanthropic tone arsenic overmuch arsenic her concern ventures, particularly successful Las Vegas. She chaired the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation from 1985-1991, co-chaired Nevada’s Blue Ribbon Education Reform Task Force successful 2011 and sat connected the Nevada State Board of Education from 2012 to 2020, serving arsenic president successful 2015 and 2017. Wynn besides served connected the nationalist committee of Communities successful Schools, an enactment dedicated to encouraging children to enactment successful school, since 1999 and was the founding president of Communities successful Schools of Nevada.

Wynn was besides a patron of the arts. President Obama named her a trustee of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts successful 2010. She served arsenic co-chair of Los Angeles County Museum of Art since 2015.

An avid creation collector, Wynn purchased a Francis Bacon triptych of creator Lucian Freud for $142.5 cardinal successful 2013 — the astir costly artwork ever sold astatine the time.

In 2016, she pledged $50 cardinal toward LACMA’s caller Peter Zumthor-designed imperishable postulation building. Parts of the plaza astir the David Geffen Galleries volition unfastened by summer; the northbound helping is named the Elaine Wynn Wing successful grant of the trustee and committee co-chair’s archetypal contribution.

In its statement, the Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation directed contributions successful Wynn’s representation to beryllium made to LACMA to enactment the gathering of its outer Las Vegas Museum of Art, which is tentatively slated to unfastened successful 2028. Las Vegas is 1 of the largest cities successful the state without an creation museum.

Wynn is survived by 2 daughters, Kevyn and Gillian, and 7 grandchildren.