01.1
21c Museum Hotel Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee, United States
21c Museum Hotels began as a contemporary art project that happened to need somewhere to put its visitors, and the Nashville property keeps that order of priority intact. The galleries occupy the ground floor and are open to anyone who walks in, free of charge, at almost any hour — guests and passers-by use the same rooms.
The building is the former Gray & Dudley hardware warehouse, and the conversion left a good deal of the original structure legible: heavy columns, tall windows onto Second Avenue, brick that has not been scrubbed into submission. Rooms above are plainer than the public floors, which is deliberate; the exhibition programme is the loud part.
Shows rotate, so a return visit is not a repeat of the first. What stays constant is the museum's habit of pairing a large thematic exhibition with site-specific commissions tucked into circulation space — stairwells, lift lobbies, the corridor to the restaurant.
- SettingDowntown Nashville, in a converted early-twentieth-century warehouse
- Art programmeFree public contemporary galleries on the ground floor, rotating exhibitions
- RoomsRestrained interiors above the gallery levels
- Also on siteRestaurant and bar occupying the former hardware showroom
01.2
Le Royal Monceau – Raffles Paris
Paris, France
Philippe Starck's 2010 redesign of this Avenue Hohenzollern-era grand hotel introduced something unusual for a palace property: a working art infrastructure. There is a gallery space, an art bookshop, a private screening room, and an art concierge whose job is to plan a guest's route through the city's exhibitions rather than its restaurants.
The public rooms are theatrical — mirrors set at deliberate angles, guitars left out as if someone has just stopped playing, canvases leaning rather than hung. It reads as a collector's apartment scaled up, and the informality is engineered rather than accidental.
Rooms and suites are large by central Paris standards and lean warm rather than minimal. The location, a short walk from the Arc de Triomphe, puts the hotel within easy reach of the Right Bank galleries the art desk tends to point guests toward.
- Setting8th arrondissement, near the Arc de Triomphe
- Art programmeOn-site gallery, art bookshop, screening room, dedicated art concierge
- DesignInteriors by Philippe Starck
- Also on siteSpa, pool, and several restaurants and bars
01.3
The Dolder Grand
Zurich, Switzerland
The Dolder Grand holds one of the larger private art collections in European hospitality, and it is displayed rather than stored: works appear in corridors, in the spa, in the lounges, and in guest rooms. Walking the building is the closest thing the hotel offers to a gallery visit, and the front desk can supply a guide to what is where.
The original 1899 building sits on the Adlisberg above Zurich, with Norman Foster's early-2000s wings extending it on either side. The junction between the two is handled honestly — the historic curtain house is not pastiched, and the new volumes do not pretend to be old.
Below the rooms is a very large spa, and below that the city and the lake. The hotel is close enough to Zurich to be practical and far enough up the hill to feel detached from it.
- SettingAdlisberg hillside above Zurich, overlooking the lake
- Art programmeExtensive private collection displayed throughout public areas and rooms
- Architecture1899 curtain house with wings by Foster + Partners
- Also on siteLarge spa, golf course nearby, several restaurants
01.4
Hotel Arts Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
Built for the 1992 Olympics, this Ritz-Carlton-managed tower on the Barceloneta waterfront carries a substantial collection of modern and contemporary Spanish and Catalan work, much of it acquired around the hotel's opening. The collection is strongest in the public areas and the club floors.
The building itself is part of the appeal: an exposed steel exoskeleton, forty-odd storeys, with Frank Gehry's copper fish sculpture at its foot. From the upper floors the city reads as a grid running inland and the Mediterranean as an uninterrupted horizon.
Practically, it functions as a large resort-scale hotel in a city that mostly does not have them — pool deck, spa, several restaurants, and the beach immediately below.
- SettingPort Olímpic waterfront, beside the beach
- Art programmeCollection of modern and contemporary Catalan and Spanish work
- ArchitectureExposed-frame 1992 tower; Gehry sculpture at the base
- Also on siteSpa, outdoor pool deck, multiple restaurants