Lou Anne Harrison Chessik, a former showgirl and a producer of the 2008 Las Vegas Showgirl Art & Costume exhibition, at the Nevada State Museum & Historical Society in Las Vegas.

AP / Jae C. Hong

LAS VEGAS A place that rarely preserves its past is now trying to preserve its pasties.

Make that pasties and crystal bras, feathered headpieces, fans and thongs — anything that documents the existence of an increasingly rare bird: the showgirl.

“We were the original Las Vegas,” says Lou Anne Harrison Chessik, the former showgirl behind a new exhibit that memorializes the garb and glamour of her withering art. “It’s important to me that we understand this history.”

There are just two large-scale showgirl revues left on the Las Vegas Strip, so very different from the 1960s when every respectable casino housed its own flock of beauties in boas. Their bloodlines may trace back to the French cancan girls of the 19th century, but it took the one-upmanship of Las Vegas to make them icons. Now, they’re fading from the stage, and Chessik and others are part of a still young movement to make sure they’re not forgotten.

Chessik has created the Showgirl Art Competition, an at the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas. It is likely the only state museum to display a G-string a spin and a twirl away from 225-million-year-old Ichthyosaur fossils.

The costumes on view include glittering skivvies designed by Cher’s costume designer Bob Mackie, a cherry-colored feathered flurry called “Red Heat Wave” and other high art of the genre. But the exhibit’s focus is artwork depicting the bare-chested performers themselves. It includes the work of Terry Ritter, a dancer-turned-artist who set up her easel backstage at the shows to create dreamy portraits.

More improbably, it includes the artwork of high school students, who were likely stunned by their luck when a still lean, leggy Chessik, 51, and a group of former dancers arrived in their classroom to regale them with the history of the showgirl.

The homework: paint portraits of dancers. Think Edgar Degas, think Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

Chessik knows this is a new world for most teenagers. The French-Canadian acrobats of Cirque du Soleil now dominate the entertainment scene of the Strip. The word “showgirl” has been adopted by far less glamorous establishments.

“A lot of strippers and different groups use the name ‘showgirl’ now,” she says, somewhat embarrassed.

“The movie Showgirls didn’t help,” adds Tom Dyer, the museum’s exhibit manager, referring to the 1995 Elizabeth Berkley bomb.

This wasn’t always so. Some of the first showgirls in Las Vegas were classically trained European ballerinas who arrived to perform in Lido de Paris, a review imported in 1958 by producer Donn Arden.

As Arden’s shows went through various iterations, he continued to demand that his dancers be trained dancers. They were known as the tallest showgirls on the Strip.

Chessik found her way to Las Vegas because at 5 feet and 11 inches she was considered too tall for most New York ballet companies. She was well paid, loved performing and had the discipline to stick with a gig that forced her to reaudition every six months.

Arden’s Jubilee! at Bally’s casino still maintains the requirement. Jubilee! has updated over the years, but still includes a nightly sinking of the Titanic and a tribute to Samson and Delilah.

“It’s over the top, it’s kitsch, it’s all those things we associate with Las Vegas culture,” Michel says.

A former dancer, Karen Burns says the production “Hello, Hollywood, Hello”employed 150 dancers. Its most famous number involved 10 dancers dressed like stewardesses in bejeweled bikinis riding in on the wings of a DC-10 mock-up.

But the cost of such spectacles grew untenable as casinos suffered through slow economic times in the 1980s. Headliners became a more popular and more affordable way to draw crowds. A push to make Las Vegas “family friendly” didn’t help.

And so the parades of topless ladies eventually were replaced by even more lavish, outlandish acrobats and contortionists. In an effort to compete, Jubilee! has recently offered a new “not topless” show open to ages 13 and up.