Art-hotels all over the world!

 

 

Amsterdam, Netherlands: The Winston is now owned by the English hotel group St. Christopher's, has quite a past. The previous owner, the late Frans Verlinden, cultivated a bohemian atmosphere in the 1980s and '90s, with "hookers, journalists, filmmakers, but most of all, artists" as frequent guests, explains manager Donald Kauwoh. Verlinden spearheaded the art-hotel trend and hired artist Aldert Mantje to select colleagues to decorate rooms and install temporary exhibits. While it started out being fairly avant-garde -- guests may have encountered dead leaves and even, possibly, an animal corpse on display -- the hotel has mellowed somewhat in recent years. Notable Rooms: The anime-inspired Playnation room, by Adriaan Koster and Menno Schenk, sports psychedelic swirls and patterns on the walls, a Pac-Man-like maze on the ceiling, and a giant 3-D gold robot in the corner.

 

Singapore: The New Majestic
When hotelier Loh Lik Peng renovated a hotel built from four Chinatown shop houses in 2006, he collaborated with the Asian Art Options collective to find artists to paint murals in all 30 rooms. Notable Rooms: Marker-and-acrylic murals by Sandra Lee in the Cheshire Suite conjure up a tweaked nursery-book charm; in one, a small red-haired girl flies toward a gigantic turtle. Justin Lee riffs off pop culture in three of the rooms. The one titled Da Jie ("Big Sister") features Mickey Mouse ears containing double-happiness symbols.

 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, artists camped out in a neoclassical building in the Mitte district of East Berlin until it evolved into a hotel in 1999. Dozens of artists, mainly German, decorated the rooms. There are now 50 total: A glass-and-concrete addition with nine new rooms opened in 2003.  Notable Rooms: Dieter Mammel placed an oversize oak bed in Mammel's Dream, so guests could experience a child's perspective. Thomas Baumgдrtel went bananas in the Royal Suite. Andreas Paeslack turned Room 300 into a 3-D version of Poor Poet, a painting of a rustic room by 19th-century artist Carl Spitzweg.

 

The poets, artists, and musicians behind Daddy Long Legs encourage guests to interact with the decor. Kim Stern's Please Do Not Disturb, for instance, has six microphones -- including one in the shower - so you can amplify your singing. The neighbors won't mind: The hotel is above a music store. Notable Rooms: Poet Finuala Dowling stocked the Palimpset room with South African literature in which she underlined favorite passages; guests can add their own marginalia.

 

Manager Hero Nakatani hired local gallery owner John Doffing to curate Hotel des Arts' first exhibition in 2004 and then had Doffing find artists ranging from graffiti taggers to professional illustrators to redesign half of the hotel's 51 rooms; other curators took over from there. Paintings by emerging artists are exhibited in the hallways. Notable Rooms: Jet Martinez was inspired by the imagery and colors of his native Mexico when he painted a modern fairy story - with a glittering moon and a silver- and gold-leaf forest full of frogs and flowers.

 

Among other art hotels we can mention Nice, France: The Windsor , Toronto, Ontario: The Gladstone, Copenhagen, Denmark: Hotel Fox , Paris, France: Hotel Amour. Each of them has its own breathtaking history. Here you can see the slideshow of the art-hotels at Budget Travel.

 

25.03.2008