Tanya Combs, the museum director and one of 30 employees about to be out of a job, glanced dolefully at Mr. Holt. “That is the problem,” she said. “You should have come more often.”

Yet it is hard to blame Mr. Holt or any of the other hundreds of people who suddenly showed up over the past few days at the news of the Oct. 17 closing, filling a parking lot that had grown barren in recent years. “They used to come in droves,” said Jack Rappaport, the president of the Liberace Foundation and Museum.

There can be no disputing that Wladziu Valentino Liberace once helped define this town that loves its glitz. He was Mr. Showmanship, if he did say so himself, and people, or at least older people, remember catching a Liberace show at the Riviera Hotel (a picture of the Riviera marquee shows Liberace with top billing over a singer named Barbra Streisand).

With his costume changes, arch piano playing and desire to shock  yes, he played Radio City Music Hall in red, white and blue hot pants and knee-high boots, which you can see in all its garish glory if you hurry  Liberace was Lady Gaga before Stefani Germanotta was even born.

There are millions of Americans who watched him on television in the 1950s, who swooned at his campy outfits and jewelry and blinding-white smile. “I want to look at Liberace!” Alice yelled at Ralph Kramden in a “Honeymooners” episode in which she pleaded with her cheap husband to buy her a television set.