Fashion, Entertainment & Material Culture
Las Vegas is a dynamic place to do public history.
Our program celebrates the city’s legendary entertainment scene—from an online forum about Taylor Swift and Clara Bow to a costume display including the Travilla gown worn by Joyce Sarno (wife of casino developer Jay Sarno) to the opening of Caesar’s Palace in 1968.
Associate Director and costume curator Deirdre Clemente leads undergraduate and graduate students to research, preserve, and display the material culture of our famous industry. Working directly with museum professionals, students learn first-hand the “hows” and “whys” of putting together a large-scale exhibition.
The Reid Public History Institute works with archival materials connected to prominent figures in entertainment, business, and civic life, including filmmaker George Sidney, developers and philanthropists such as Irwin Molasky, and performers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. Photographs, correspondence, clothing, ephemera, memorabilia, and other personal objects reveal histories that extend far beyond individual biography.
Approached through material culture, these collections help us ask larger questions about celebrity, performance, memory, place, and identity. They illuminate the networks behind Las Vegas’s growth, the construction of public personas, and the ways personal objects can preserve experiences that traditional archival records sometimes leave unseen.
By documenting, interpreting, and sharing these collections, the Reid Public History Institute connects individual lives to the broader history of Las Vegas and to the cultural worlds that made the city possible.
Current & Past Material Culture Projects
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Steve & Eydie
Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé were one of American entertainment’s most enduring musical partnerships, known for their polished vocals, comedy, and sophisticated stage presence. Frequent Las Vegas performers, they became closely associated with the city’s midcentury showroom era and its culture of live entertainment. Their archival materials offer a window into the craft, glamour, and working lives behind a celebrated show-business partnership.
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Building Paradise Fall 2026
Irwin Molasky helped give modern Las Vegas its look. By bringing influential architects Dan Palmer and William Krisel to the city, he helped redefine midcentury modern design in the desert, shaping neighborhoods, commercial spaces, and a distinctly Las Vegas vision of modern living. His projects belonged to the same world of poolside glamour, sharp tailoring, cocktail lounges, and desert modernism that defined Las Vegas in the Rat Pack era.
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Walking Box Ranch & Rex Bell
Walking Box Ranch preserves the desert home and legacy of silent-film star Clara Bow and her husband, actor and Nevada politician Rex Bell. Built in the 1930s near Searchlight, the ranch connected Hollywood celebrity with the working landscapes of southern Nevada. Its preservation offers a rare glimpse into a moment when movie-star glamour, ranch life, and Nevada politics overlapped in the Mojave Desert.
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Filmmaker George Sidney
Director George Sidney brought Hollywood spectacle to Las Vegas, helping translate the city’s glamour, performance culture, and larger-than-life image to the screen. Best known for lavish musicals and star-driven films, Sidney worked in an era when Las Vegas was becoming inseparable from entertainment itself. His career offers a window into the close relationship between Hollywood and the city’s emerging identity as a capital of showmanship.
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Spring 2024: "Going All In: Fashion and Performance in Las Vegas"
From showgirls to senators and construction tycoons to casino workers, all types inhabit our valley. We live in a wildly diverse city, and this exhibition considers our history and culture through one thing that unites us all: fashion.
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Dressing Eydie Gormé
Eydie Gormé’s stage costumes embodied the glamour of mid-century nightclub and Las Vegas entertainment, pairing elegant silhouettes with sequins, beading, and dramatic fabrics designed to catch the stage lights. Her wardrobe helped shape a polished, sophisticated public image that matched the energy and spectacle of her performances with Steve Lawrence.
