For hoteliers, few assets can match the versatility and impact of a thoughtfully conceived art program.
Picture lobbies, common areas, guest rooms and meeting spaces without—then with—art. As a painting or photograph instantly transforms a blank wall, the difference is profound.
Art can provide a compelling calling card and distinct identity in the crowded hospitality marketplace. Creating ambience and atmosphere that engages the mind and senses upon arrival, art offers its own welcome while declaring the hotel’s personality and values. Supplying visual and emotional rewards while anchoring on-site engagements such as tours, themed events and wellness activities, art creates enhanced guest experiences, talking points and memories.
For meetings and events with artistic appeal, here are some North American and international masters of the “art” of hospitality.
Museum Quality
Offering the most dimension and truest interpretation of the “art hotel” are properties that integrate the character of a museum. Offering 600,000-plus square feet of meeting space, the 1,606-room Hilton Anatole in Dallas is a paragon example.
Opened in 1979, the property was developed by late Dallas real estate magnate Trammell Crow, whose free-admission Crow Collection of Asian Art, housing the singular collection assembled by Crow and his late wife Margaret in the 1960s, is known as the “Jewel Box” of the Dallas Arts District.
The couple also installed many of their global treasures in the Anatole, creating America’s largest in-hotel collection. Highlights include a 10-foot marble statue of Gandhi; twin life-size carved wooden elephants from Thailand; two 12-foot Berlin Wall sections; and in the outdoor sculpture garden, the 15-ton propeller from the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, torpedoed by a German submarine in 1915.
Programs include art scavenger hunts; audio- and print-guided Top Art Treasures and One-Mile Art Walk tours; and the Anatole Art Dine-Around, which pairs 15 of the hotel’s top pieces with culinary items from its country of origin. The Berlin Wall menu, for example, features mini bratwurst, German potato salad, strudel and beer.
“Could art and commerce coexist in harmony?” That question faced Louisville, Ky.-based preservationists and contemporary art collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson (also see Zoom In Q&A,) more than a decade ago, as they sought to accomplish the dual vision of downtown revitalization and broadening the reach of contemporary art into public life.
In 2006, partnering with renowned architect Deborah Berke, the pair transformed several 19th century tobacco and bourbon warehouses in downtown Louisville into their first 21c Museum Hotel.
Their celebrated concept quickly became a unique hospitality brand, integrating “North America’s first museum dedicated solely to collecting and exhibiting the art of the 21st century” within boutique hotels created from downtown revitalization projects.
The group-capable 21c line expanded to other cities, including Cincinnati; Bentonville, Ark.; Durham, N.C.; and Oklahoma City. Last month, Brown and Wilson hosted a reception at Berke’s Manhattan studio, announcing the opening of their seventh property, located in Nashville, Tenn.
With Kansas City, Mo., Indianapolis and future destinations in the pipeline, groups have increasing geographic opportunities to combine meetings and events with 21c’s permanent commissioned installations, group and solo exhibitions by emerging and established artists, and other cultural programming.
Another singular “integrated art hotel experience” awaits at the acclaimed Alfond Inn in Winter Park, Fla. Offering 10,000 square feet of versatile space, including the glass-domed Conservatory, the 112-room boutique is the only hotel in the U.S. that serves as the extension of a fine arts museum. Owned by private liberal arts school Rollins College, the hotel showcases the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, which forms part of the college’s Cornell Fine Arts Museum.
1968 Rollins’ graduates Barbara and Theodore Alfond’s donated collection of nearly 300 paintings, photographs, sculptures and mixed media works, rotated each April, brings the museum into the hotel and guest experience. Programs include audio tours, curated walking tours and monthly happy hour events.
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Every Picture Tells a Story
In hotel marketing and branding, art in any form is worth a thousand words for creating distinctiveness, uniqueness and attractiveness.
Launched in 2009, Australia’s Art Series Hotel Group operates artist-inspired, group-capable boutiques in destinations that include Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. In 2012, the month-long “Steal Banksy” campaign invited guests to steal—and if successful, keep—two paintings by elusive British undercover artist Banksy that were circulated around three Art Series hotels in Melbourne. With a woman from a rival public relations firm reportedly walking off with one piece valued at approximately $12,000, the story was a viral sensation, raising positive global awareness of the brand.
Banksy was back in hotel news just last month for his newly opened Walled Off Hotel in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem. While for intrepid groups only, the hotel, filled with Banksy’s works and boasting “the world’s worst view,” underscores how art can attract attention, tell a story and stir conversation.
In taking over the longtime home of Philadelphia’s iconic Four Seasons in late 2015, the 391-room Logan Philadelphia, with 12,700 square feet of flexible indoor and outdoor space, had its own identity to establish as a destination hotel. The answer was an artistic homage to Philadelphia, comprising 50-plus pieces created by local artists.
Starting in the lobby with Philadelphia Elite Silhouettes, a figure-eight chandelier of 300-plus photos of famed Philadelphians, the gallery flows through the common areas to the upper floors and guest rooms. From Hombre de Hierro, a figure of steel plates representing the Philadelphians who shaped the city’s industrial history, to the (Grace) Kelly Series, the works, self-toured via a mobile app, communicate an unmistakable sense of place.
Located in Denver’s Golden Triangle Museum District, the 165-room ART Hotel is a dynamic modern art gallery that immerses guests in one multisensory experience to the next. From the ground level’s large-scale light installation, elevators playing avant-garde video art bring guests to the fourth-floor main lobby and its collection of works by Warhol and other masters. With original works decorating each floor and guest room, the creativity extends into versatile spaces accommodating groups of up to 300 people.
Las Vegas groups have world-class art connections at Bellagio and the multivenue CityCenter complex, which incorporates the elite ARIA, Vdara and Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas hotels.
Located in the Promenade Shops, the preeminent Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art partners with global museums and foundations to present exhibitions of works from masters including Picasso, van Gogh, Monet and others. Its newest exhibit, I Am The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, celebrates the life and memory of the world’s best heavyweight boxer and provides a never-before-seen look into “The Champ’s” captivating life. Offering daily docent-led tours, the gallery also hosts private tours for groups.
CityCenter’s $40 million Fine Art Program features works encompassing a multitude of styles throughout the multibillion-dollar complex, with group options that include self-guided tours and the Spa at ARIA’s intensive Indoor Hike/Art Walk program.
In Old Montreal, Guess Jeans founder Georges Marciano’s 56-room LHotel showcases his collection of original works from Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and other luminaries, decorating the lobby, guest rooms and conference spaces. Billed as Toronto’s “art boutique,” the Gladstone, an update of the city’s oldest continually operating hotel, from 1889, offers 37 artist-designed rooms, plus event and gallery space hosting 70-plus annual exhibitions.
Featuring more than 200 pieces of original contemporary works, 60-room luxury art hotel Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis offers divisible ART rooms for meetings of between 10 and 200 people. Via the hotel’s Unlock Art program, guests have complimentary access to the preeminent Walker Art Center Minneapolis using their artist-designed key cards.
From the art-filled Eldorado Hotel & Spa in Santa Fe, N.M., and the Mansion on Forsyth Park in Savannah, Ga., with its Grand Bohemian Gallery, to The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore and its 4,200-piece museum-quality collection, the list goes on, with art hotels calling around the globe.
On or off the agenda, meetings with art are ultimately about discovery and new possibilities, or as famed French Impressionist Edgar Degas once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
