By JIM MARTY
The Progress
The Ear got a chance to interview Johnthan Warren, Chairman and CEO of The Liberace Foundation, and take a tour of the Liberace Garage. Here’s what I found out.
My interest in the Liberace collection began a few months ago when I attended a Styx concert at the Venetian. Their keyboardist, Larence Dowan rolled out a beautiful gold decorated piano. He told the audience it was on loan from the Liberace Foundation. I wanted to find out more, which led me to tour the Liberace Garage and talk to Mr. Warren.
Here are excerpts of that conversation.
The Ear: Johnathan, can you give is some background on the Liberace Foundation?
Mr. Warren: Liberace started the Foundation in 1976, well before his passing in 1987. The Foundation was funded until 2011 when the endowment settled and the liquid assets were distributed to the beneficiaries.
The result was, that it left the Foundation with no money to operate, and it filed for bankruptcy in 2014. The Liberace Foundation has operated on volunteers and contributions for rent and other expenses since then. It collects some money from admissions to see the collection.
I am a volunteer as well.
The Ear: I found finding the location of Liberace’s collection a little confusing. It seems to be in several locations.
Mr. Warren: The Liberace collection is very large since it includes costumes, cars and pianos so it is spread out over five locations. Some of the cars and pianos as well as costumes can be found at what we call the Liberace Garage on Dean Martin Drive. That is the one you visited.
The Ear: Yes, admission was $20 but the Rolls Royce collection was very interesting.
Mr. Warren: We are fortunate to have that warehouse space donated by Mr. Michael Dezer. He keeps his own car collection there as well. The rest of the collection is in four other locations around Las Vegas including Resort World, The Conrad, The Clarke County Administrative Offices and Michael Jackson’ former mansion, The Thriller Villa.
These four are free to the public except for the Thriller Villa, which is $179 to tour. The space there is donated by the current owner, A.J. Iglesias.
We also lend out parts of the collection, mostly the costumes, to museums all over the world. It is an exhibit in motion.
The Ear: I saw Lawrence Gowan, longtime keyboard player for Styx, play one of Liberace’s pianos at a Styx concert at the Venetian a few months ago. How does that work?
Mr. Warren: Yes, he played the intro to “Come Sail Away” to close the show every night of their residency. This is very rare as we seldom lend out the collection’s pianos. We only do it for major artists. Cardy B was lent one for the 2019 Grammy’s.
It is very difficult and expensive to move these pianos, so the artist needs to pay our staff to do it.
The Ear: What about the Rolls Royces? Are they ever rented out for movies?
Mr. Warren: We did this for the 2013 biography of Liberace played by Michael Douglas. Again, we do this very rarely. The Rolls Royces are museum pieces. It is not practical to drive them on the street. The insurance alone would make it impossible.
We were recently offered $1 million for one of them but we turned it down. Our goal is to keep the collection together.
The Ear: Thank you very much, I wish you great success with the Liberace Foundation.
