The museum was orphaned in the mid 1990s, when the City of Las Vegas announced it needed its space to make way for an expanded senior center to service the neighborhood surrounding the park.
It was invited to share the yet-to-be-built Sahara Library and Fine Art Museum in the new Peccole Ranch subdivision, but it had to reside in a temporary space provided by the Earnest Becker Family until the building was finished in 1997.
[citation needed] When it first opened, it scheduled a variety of exhibitions from Dale Chihuly and Marc Chagall to Auguste Rodin while it was briefly affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.
[citation needed] Under Dr. Lumpkin, the Las Vegas Art Museum exhibited a survey of paintings by Michael Reafsnyder and work by important Southern California-based minimalists including Robert Irwin, Larry Bell and James Turrell.
Ethan Acres, Robert Acuna, Philip Argent, Aaron Baker, Tim Bavington, Thomas Burke, Jane Callister, Bradley Corman, Jacqueline Ehlis, Curtis Fairman, Gajin Fujita, Sush Machida Gaikotsu, James Gobel, Sherin Guirguis, Jack Hallberg, James Hough, Shawn Hummel, Carrie Jenkins, Angela Kallus, Wayne Littlejohn, Victoria Reynolds, David Ryan, Jason Tomme, Sean Slattery, Yek and Almond Zigmund.