MFA sending more paintings to Vegas

It was a gamble when the Museum of Fine Arts decided to loan more than a dozen Monets to a Las Vegas casino gallery last year. Art critics and museum curators were not pleased, saying that it violated the mission of the nonprofit institution. But the MFA received a reported $1 million, and the show at the Bellagio Gallery of Art will draw about 450,000 people by its May 30 closing.

Yesterday the MFA announced it will send more paintings to the Strip. ''The Impressionist Landscape From Corot to Van Gogh" opens June 10 at the Bellagio, replacing the Monet exhibition. For the new show, the MFA will send 27 works, leaving behind seven from the Monet exhibit.

''The show is going to be stunning," says Matthew Hileman, the Bellagio Gallery's marketing director. ''What they're giving us is absolutely fantastic. It's not all Monets, but it's just as strong."

But there is one difference: The MFA's name isn't featured in the title of the show, as it was with the Monet exhibit. MFA director Malcolm Rogers would not say how much the museum will receive in the deal. At $15 a ticket, the Monet show took in over $6 million.

''Our paintings, some of them in store, come out of store and are seen by the people of Las Vegas and an international audience," said Rogers. ''Also, the exhibition, in a way, does supply us with annual support."

The new show isn't likely to silence the MFA's critics. Last year, Newsweek, in an article titled ''Show Me the Monet," questioned the ethics of the arrangement. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight told the magazine the MFA ''ought to be ashamed of itself."

Ivan Gaskell, a longtime critic of Rogers who is curator of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts at the Harvard University Art Museums, said yesterday that he's particularly concerned about the MFA's relationship with such a for-profit venture. The New York gallery Pace Wildenstein runs the 2,400-square-foot Bellagio gallery.

''When you start to rent these things out, to make money out of, for profit, then it's disingenuous to say that, by the way, we're still getting more people to see them," Gaskell said. ''That's not what it's about. It's about making money."

Rogers disagrees. He points to the Monet show's attendance. Over 17 months, the show attracted almost half the number of people the MFA draws in a year.

''Our strength in painting in the second half of the 19th century is almost unparalleled outside France," said Rogers. ''So we are one of the very few museums that could do this. And it's an active part of our policy to reach out."