Flexibility and adaptability are two traits I value highly in myself, so I often don’t really have a set schedule or routine to my life; instead, I keep my daily agenda fluid and handle things as they come up in the order of my perceived priority of such tasks. With that being said, one thing that has still stayed fairly consistent during my adult life is that I tend to stay indoors and work during weekends so I can avoid large crowds, especially in tourist-heavy cities like Las Vegas.
However, once in a while, I will be summoned outside on a Saturday or Sunday for various different reasons. For instance, if some of my friends are in town visiting for the weekend, I will venture outdoors to meet up and spend time with them. Another example is when certain attractions have free day promotions.
That recently happened with the Rita Deanin Abbey Art Museum, an art museum located near the Centennial Hills neighborhood in the northwest Las Vegas Valley. This is a museum that I’ve had on my “want to go” list for a while now because of how unusual it is for there to be any kind of attraction like this so far and deep into the outskirts of the Valley. Admission is usually US$20.00 per person, but I noticed lately that they were running free admission promotions during the first Saturday of every month, so I seized the opportunity and headed over to redeem my complementary visit.
After arriving at the museum, I promptly found out the rationale behind the location—this used to be Rita Deanin Abbey’s property, and during the final years of her life, she oversaw the construction of the museum on her plot of land. After her death in early 2021, construction was wrapped up and the museum opened to the public a few years ago in 2022.
This is probably one of the most unexpectedly and surprisingly nicest art museums I’ve ever been to. I assumed it would just be a small, cozy spot that showcased a limited collection of art pieces created by a local artist, but instead, it was a very professional and full-blown art museum with multiple galleries (with even an outdoor exhibit) and a wide variety of art. It had a very clean and modern theme to it, and I actually found it to be even nicer than many of the major well-funded city-namesake art museums found in a lot of large metropolitan areas across the United States.
When I was there, it was sparsely populated, even though it was on a free admission promotion day; I imagine that means that it’s even less busy on normal days, and this overall probably isn’t too popular of an art museum. I find that both surprising and unsurprising—surprising because this is a very high-quality art museum that I think deserves much more traffic and appreciation, but unsurprising because it’s so far away from all the other popular attractions in Las Vegas that it’s probably rare for people to make the trek all the way out there unless they are true art enthusiasts.
If you’re visiting Las Vegas and primarily staying on the Las Vegas Strip, then I think it’s unrealistic to thread in a visit to this art museum. However, if you’re staying closer to Summerlin or are making a trip to Mount Charleston to go on a hike, you’ll be closer to the Centennial Hills neighborhood, which in that case, I think the Rita Deanin Abbey Museum definitely deserves a spot on your list of places to consider visiting, even at the full US$20.00-per-adult ticket price.
Here are some photographs I took in the museum during my visit:
