By KRISTEN PETERSON, Las Vegas Sun

LAS VEGAS - After years of controversy, the Liberace Museum is closing -- leaving behind a hotbed of drama and allegations of financial mismanagement since the showman died in 1987.

His will -- which named as executor his attorney, Joel Strote, and assigned him trustee of Liberace's scholarship foundation and museum -- has been fought over.

Even the arts are suffering in these tough economic times, at least in Las Vegas.
After 59 years, the Las Vegas Art Museum closed indefinitely last month because it was broke. There was no endowment, no public funding and little community involvement.

LAS VEGAS -- Almost 50 years after she designed the diamond-shaped icon, Betty Willis finally is making a little extra cash off the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign.Last week, Willis signed limited edition prints of a photograph of the landmark standing in the foreground of an ever-expanding Strip.

LAS VEGAS -- Surviving on the Strip is not easy for some icons.You watch the public spectacles of your friends and neighbors being imploded. What's left of them fills the sky. Tourists take pictures.And there you are, aged and dwarfed by glittering newcomers, a relic of a Las Vegas no longer celebrated.