Museums for Teens in Vegas

Vegas has such an oversized image that most people don’t realize that it was barely 10 years ago that the valley’s population reached the one million mark. That means the city has had less than a decade to develop the kind of cultural richness that larger cities take for granted. So don’t expect to spend days touring our local art or natural history museums, they—like most of our local cultural experiences—can pretty thoroughly be covered in an afternoon.

Sometimes, however, smaller really is better. Instead of being overwhelmed by a cornucopia of offerings, Las Vegas museums tend to cover tiny subjects well. You may not learn everything about Impressionist painting, but at a recent exhibit at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, visitors came away with a pretty good understanding of how Impressionist art came into being. These bite-size museums let kids digest just enough to satisfy them. And when they aren’t being force-fed good-for-you culture, they may just beg for more.

• A replica of the Starship Enterprise at the Star Trek museum in Las Vegas.
• Jesse Michael Nix

Parents who are interested in history won’t want to miss the Las Vegas (the meadows) Springs Preserve (702-822-7700), an 180-acre historical and environmental complex that explains why Vegas is where it is – in short, water. The Nevada State Museum (702-486-5205), relocating to the Preserve in 2009, looks at The Meadows from its prehistory forward. Families will get a dose of radioactive history if they stop by the Atomic Testing Museum (702-794-5161) affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute. The museum offers a sometimes shocking account of Nevada’s role in developing the atomic bomb.  Moving forward to the distant future, Star Trek: The Experience (888-GO-BOLDLY or 702-697-8700), boldly goes where no one has gone yet to see the “history” of the Star Trek universe within a futuristic 24th-century museum. Klingon Encounter and BORG Invasion 4D are two interactive experiences included in the tour.

Art lovers shouldn’t miss the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art (877-957-9777 or 702-693-7871) and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum (702-414-2440) in Las Vegas. Both work with world-class museums to develop exclusive shows exhibits for Vegas that show a unique aspect of a specific artist or art movement. Music lovers simply must stop by the Liberace Museum (702-798-5595). This masterful pianist and showman’s estate continues to contributes thousands of dollars in performing-arts scholarships to kids around the country, decades after his death. You can hear why he is so beloved as his music plays while you wander from rhinestone piano to glitzy costumes and over-the-top automobiles. The human body has always been a source of artistic inspiration, but in Bodies...The Exhibition (702-739-2411) actual, preserved human bodies are displayed in fascinating—or creepy—detail.

King Tut Museum (702-262-4000; recreates the burial chamber of the boy king as it was discovered by Howard Carter in 1992, complete with the broken artifacts left by previous tomb robbers and the magnificent guardian statues. Afterwards, walk through a full-scale recreation of the Titanic (702-739-2411) complete with the outer Promenade Deck, the Grand Staircase and various other rooms including first-class and third-class hallways and an iceberg wall that you can touch, along with 320 other never-before-seen artifacts.