Much like food in a pill, Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative, and Heidi Montag's singing career, Las Vegas's art scene is widely regarded as a half-baked idea that, while heavily bankrolled (at least in the beginning), never really got off the ground. On vacation in Sin City last week, I scoured the strip for any signs of remaining cultural life now that much of the city's cultural funding and many of its art professionals have left the area. My conclusion? Whatever art is left in Vegas won't be there for long.

One sign that the proverbial canary in the Vegas art-scene mineshaft has expired came last July, when academic couple David Hickey and Libby Lumpkin — prominent champions of the arts and the visionary force behind the now-shuttered Las Vegas Art Museum — left the city in defeat. Then, in October, the Liberace Museum became the latest in a long line of the city's cultural institutions to close due to lack of funds. These blows were temporarily countered by an influx of public art courtesy of CityCenter, a shiny hotel and shopping mall complex that opened in 2009 as home to one of the nation's largest public installations of corporate-owned art, including sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Henry Moore. But even public art, everyone's favorite cultural fix-it, can't cure Las Vegas's art problem.

It's not that there aren't any other art institutions left in the city. The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art consistently mounts new — though not necessarily good — exhibitions featuring works from the hotel's impressive holdings together with borrowed work from venerable collections like the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Though many downtown galleries have closed in the last few years, others, like Brett Wesley Gallery and nonprofit collective Emergency Arts, have remained open. But the Guggenheim's effort at opening a museum in Vegas, in collaboration with Russia's Hermitage museum, met an ignominious, gasping end in 2008 after seven years of operation — an indicator of the city's lack of cultural oxygen.

The problem seems to come down to one intractable fact: in a city that consistently appeals to visitors' basest appetites — sex, food, and money — highbrow entertainment comes off as obtrusive and forced. Vegas may have become a destination for elite restaurants and four-star hotels, but these are passive pleasures. (Isn't half the fun of eating that squid ink risotto knowing you didn't lift a finger to prepare it?) Unlike enjoying food, viewing art requires concentration, effort, and allowing the possibility of discomfort — the very three things most people are visiting Vegas to escape.

Below, the latest signs that the Vegas art scene is on its way out, from a reporter on the ground.

View Slideshow: 5 Indications That Las Vegas's Glitzy Art Gamble Has Gone Bust

1. THE ATOMIC TESTING MUSEUM

One of the few local museums to remain open, the Atomic Testing Museum is partially funded by the Smithsonian, but has none of the Washington institution's gravitas, interesting architecture, or once proud claims to impartiality. Devoted to chronicling the history of atomic testing in the United States, which has deep roots in Las Vegas, the museum might be more accurately called the "Atomic Propaganda Museum." According to the chronologically jumbled presentation of weapons, photos, videos and historical memorabilia, atomic testing has, in the last 50 years, saved both freedom of speech and the Chilean miners. Also, wall text reminds visitors that the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan was "unanimous."

2. THE WYNN AND ENCORE HOTELS

Vegas hotel mogul Steve Wynn is one of the most prominent art collectors in the country, and the possessor of one of the costliest elbows in history. The masterpieces once on display in his hotels include Mondrian and Picasso. (Before Wynn, the city's decor rarely got classier than Dale Chihuly.) Three years ago, however, the hotelier removed almost all of his personal artworks from public view, save a collection of Boteros in one of the hotel restaurants. Though a representative for Wynn didn't respond to a request for comment on the changes, a concierge at the hotel said the magnate removed the art because "he wanted the hotel itself to be the artwork." Now, I love a good Mondrian as much as the next art history nerd, but even I struggle to imagine how a primary color canvas could overshadow an entire lobby filled with live trees and hundreds of oversize paper lanterns.  

3. "FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING: A SURVEY OF THE HUMAN FORM"

This current exhibition at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, a survey of the human figure in art through time, is one of the more cynical exhibitions I've seen in a long time. Rather than organizing the artworks chronologically — which clearly would have required far too much sustained attention from viewers — the curators decided to reduce the exhibition to a series of entirely superficial comparisons. Renoir and Milton Avery portraits are placed next to each other presumably because both subjects are wearing blue; an Armand Guillaumin image is paired with a David Hockney painting because both men are pictured in profile. More than a waste of some really wonderful artworks, it's also a sad comment on the curators' assumptions about visitors' intelligence.

3. THE "DAVID"

Caesar's Palace is home to a full-scale replica of Michelangelo's "David," conveniently located just across the hall from a Harley Davidson store. According to the plaque on the pedestal, Las Vegas's "David" is made from "the same Italian marble used by the master for the original." So is this toilet.

5. CITYCENTER

CityCenter is doing a lot for Vegas's art scene right now, providing some delightful public artworks like Oldenberg's larger-than-life typewriter eraser. But it also provides some pretty horrifying public art knockoffs, like a pair of massive, eight-foot-tall ceramic bunnies in a flowerbed in the middle of the mall. But these jacked-up critters — positioned much more prominently than the Oldenberg — were not by Yoshimoto Nara, Jeff Koons, or any other animal-friendly artist. As someone at the customer service desk informed me, they were, in fact, courtesy of the floral department.