Liberace Museum to Shut Down in Las Vegas

What can I say?  This is really sad when you think of the pre-Stonewall world.  Liberace was the most visable Gay Man in America.  He just didn’t think so…

Middle class women in the South spent their lives denying that Liberace was gay…He was just “flamboyant.”

Love it or hate it.  It’s a fact:  Liberace is part of our Gay history.  And it’s going to be harder to find him in the future…

The Liberace Museum, long one of this city’s best-known and unusual attractions, is shutting down next month, the latest victim of a brutal recession that has hit Nevada particularly hard.

A singular landmark since its opening in 1979, the two-building spread topped by a skyward sculpture of a keyboard contains thousands of artifacts from the career of its namesake, who once reigned in the Strip’s showrooms by pounding sonatas out of rhinestone-encrusted pianos while donning outlandish sequined capes.

The museum is operated by the Liberace Foundation, whose board chairman announced plans for closure today and said his organization would narrow its focus to raising money for the music scholarships it has awarded for decades. More than 30 employees will lose their jobs.

via Liberace Museum to Shut Down in Las Vegas.