Hotels Crafting Close Encounters with Art

Oftentimes, when choosing to stay at a hotel, the neighborhood is just as important as the room. We choose hotels to be close to the city’s most interesting sites. But hotels like Hotel Zena, Viceroy, Eaton DC, and Citizen M are collapsing the gap between sites to see and places to be. Nestled in cozy neighborhoods, these tucked away boutique hotels have transformed into art exhibition spaces, displaying some of the city's most outstanding artists. 

In February, I was invited to a dinner at Viceroy to celebrate the opening of Kinfolk, an exhibition by Charles Jean Pierre and Kendall Robinson, both Howard University alumni. Though Robinson wasn’t present during the soft opening of the exhibition, Jean-Pierre was able to walk me through the connections his paintings make to his motherland, Haiti. The conversation flowed along with the wine. It was a really nice time, and it got me thinking about Hotels as alternative spaces for viewing art.

Art by Charles Jean-Pierre

The setup is perfect. After spending some time viewing the artwork in the lobby, you sit down at the hotel restaurant to enjoy a meal and drinks with friends. The situation made for a lovely time of getting to know other people with art at the center of the conversation. Jean-Pierre was hoping to connect with kinfolk, and the night proved to be one where the familial nature of friends started to develop. There were administrators from arts organizations, gallery owners, artists, the curator, and me, the art writer, all present at the table, sharing a meal that would leave us connected.

RBG Mural by Andrea Sheehan x Julie Coyle Art Associates

Viceroy is the sister hotel to Hotel Zena. And they are both building their art collections with zeal. While Viceroy hosts rotating exhibitions, Hotel Zena’s lobby is filled with a permanent exhibition of women artists.The idea is to celebrate warrior women, so Jason Bowers, curator of the lobby for Hotel Zena, created a mural of Amazon women on the outside of the building. And inside the lobby is a plethora of artworks created by local women artists, including a portrait of Ruth Bader Gingsburg made out of colored tampons. 

Art at Hotel Zena

The Knickerbocker Hotel located in Time Square at the center of  New York City is also making the hotel a  hot spot for art. As far as marketing goes, these hotels are doing something that definitely creates an audience. Instead of going to a gallery, viewers can now see some art, have a meal at the hotel restaurant, and talk about the art they loved. The days where you reserve a room close to the city’s most amazing attractions could be less important to travelers visiting hotels. Now they might be interested in staying at a hotel where there’s art in the lobby, so they can see what the artists in the city have to offer. 

The conversation at our Kinfolk dinner is one that I will not soon forget. The ambiance was perfect, the food was good, and the camaraderie was amazing. But it was the art that brought us there. Without the art, it would have been dinner with strangers. Our common interest in this one thing made us kin, at least for the night. That’s what it felt like.