Paintbrush Gateway 45-foot paintbrushes (Arts District)

Two steel paintbrushes, each 45 feet tall, mark the way into the Las Vegas Arts District along East Charleston Boulevard. They are the work of Dennis Oppenheim, whom KNPR’s Desert Companion in 2010 described as a New York-based artist best known for conceptual and body-based work of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the commission was argued over from the start.

According to the Las Vegas Sun in 2010, a selection committee voted 6 to 4 in October 2007 for a different Oppenheim proposal, paint buckets pouring neon with flamingos. It came in at $3 million, so the artist returned with the paintbrushes. His first brush design had four brushes, two at each end of the district, and that too exceeded the budget, so two were built. The Sun gave the project as $700,000; Desert Companion said $750,000, funded by the City of Las Vegas Arts Commission, and noted that many local artists had also made proposals.