'Beyond the Wall' Pink Floyd Art Exhibit Opens at Animazing Gallery

October 16 and 17: The Two Nights to Plan Around

Of the three listed events, two are worth building a night around, and they fall back-to-back.

The VIP Collectors‘ Preview is Friday, October 16, from 6 to 9 p.m. It’s billed as private, which in gallery terms usually means invited collectors and press, but admission is listed as free, so it’s worth calling the gallery at (702) 785-0061 to ask about getting in rather than assuming you’re locked out. This is the night to be in the room if you want to talk to Ginger Gilmour about a piece before someone else buys it — limited editions move fast at shows like this, and the serious collectors show up on preview night specifically because the good inventory doesn’t always survive to the weekend.

The public opening is the next day, Saturday, October 17, from 4 to 7 p.m., and this one’s for everyone else. Same artist lineup in attendance — Gilmour, Mel Balatbat, Randy Martinez, Dale Benson, and Nancy Elhallak — same free admission, just a wider door, which makes it the night to meet the artists without needing an invitation. Go early, though; a three-hour window at a Grand Canal Shoppes gallery on a Saturday afternoon is going to get crowded with foot traffic from the Venetian’s canal area regardless of how niche the subject matter is.

If you can’t make either opening weekend event, the show runs through November 2, so there's more than two weeks of regular viewing hours to catch the Scarfe guitars and the Thorgerson prints without the crowd or the scheduled artist appearances.

Why the Scarfe Guitars Are the Thing to See

Most band-art shows lean on prints, because prints are what’s available — the big stuff is usually locked up in private collections or museums. Two custom guitars, built specifically for this show and hand-painted by the actual artist who designed “The Wall,” is a different tier of commitment from a gallery. Scarfe didn’t license his imagery to a manufacturer for a mass-produced guitar skin; he painted them himself after they arrived from the Lynn Ellsworth custom shop. That detail is what separates this from a themed weekend of rented posters — Animazing built an actual arrangement with the artist.

Pair that with Gilmour’s original sculptural and painted work, much of which draws directly from her marriage to David Gilmour and her own relationship to the band’s visual language, and you’ve got a show leaning on artists with direct, personal ties to Pink Floyd rather than secondhand tribute work. Thorgerson’s inclusion matters for the same reason — he wasn't hired help, he was friends with Syd Barrett and Roger Waters going back to school in Cambridge, decades before any of those album covers existed.

Animazing Gallery's Track Record

Animazing has two locations inside Grand Canal Shoppes, and the gallery has built its reputation on illustration and pop-culture art rather than the fine-art-auction-house model you'd find elsewhere on the property. Owner Nicholas Leone consults for auction houses and runs pop-up events around the country centered on gallery artists, so a limited-run rock-art exhibition like this fits the pattern of what the gallery already does rather than reading as a one-off stunt. The Grand Canal Shoppes location puts the gallery in the same retail corridor as Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and the Atomic Saloon Show, so it’s an easy add-on if you’re already walking the canal, not a destination that requires planning a separate trip to The Venetian.

For anyone who wants the full artist roster or needs to confirm which pieces are available before showing up, Animazing's gallery site and its Instagram, @animazinggallery, are the places to check — gallery inventory for a show like this changes as pieces sell, especially original Gilmour work and the Scarfe limited editions.

The full artist list beyond the headliners includes John Douglas, Mel Balatbat, Randy Martinez, Dale Benson, and Nancy Elhallak, so there's more depth to the show than just the three best-known names.