Sleeping With The Masters

Great art is adding color, life and personality to the traveler ’s luxury hotel experience

- Lark Gould

Art and hospitality make great bed-fellows at hotel properties that have found a satisfying focus on the art world. No matter who the master on the wall may be, guests get a chance to revel in works they might not get to experience otherwise and often in the luxury of quiet and privacy.

Hotel walls offer the perfect backdrop for works that tell stories of deep and current history, provide fodder for thought and add a pleasant sense of place. Guests get to enjoy these moments without elbowing others for a better view or feeling the pressure to get through a warren of galleries before closing time.

In many hotels, such as Vik Retreats, a boutique chain of design, wine and art-centric stays in Chile and Uruguay, art, flair and style breathes through every space. The properties are owned and operated by a husband and wife team of high value art collectors and the guest rooms are but canvases on which prominent regional artists are commissioned to lay out their vision.

Also in the region, in Santiago de Cali near the West Andes mountains in Colombia, stands a giant architectural landmark. The Hotel Spiwak Chipichape was inspired by New York City’s Guggenheim Museum and houses an note worthy collection of regional artworks. The 226-suite property is modern, minimalist, circular and unconventional in design, and greets guests with a dizzying array of art pieces and impressive sculptural works in the lobby.

NEW YORK-MADE MOMENTS

However, nowhere is the intersection of art and hospitality more visible than in New York, long at the epicenter of the international art world. Until now, that world was given to museumgoers and denizens of the social elite. But these days, you can wake up to the art of legendary painters and sculptors past and present at several of New York City’s trendy hotels.