Artist in residence becomes the latest in hotel amenities
BUSINESSES typically try to keep graffiti off their walls, and remove it when it does sneak on. Not the Quin Hotel, in Midtown Manhattan. It commissions graffiti.
Chaz Barrisson, half of the street art duo London Police, recently painted two of his signature grinning characters on the wall by the service doors of the hotel. It was part of the hotel’s artist-in-residence program, which included a gallery show of the London Police’s graphic, black-and-white work, done on canvas and paper.
As hotels work harder to distinguish themselves in the age of Airbnb, many have focused on using art to give their decor a one-of-a-kind look. But with artist-in-residence programs, some hotels in the US and abroad are going further.
“The hotel wants to look good,” Barrisson said at the start of his weeklong residency in mid-August. So they bring in “happening” art, he said. “And for me, it doesn’t hurt, does it?”
Other hotels with artist-inresidence programs include Quirk Hotel, in Richmond, Virginia, which recently brought in Carli Holcomb, a sculptor who often works in metal.
One of the longest-running residencies has been the illustrator David Downton at Claridge’s in London, where he has been on site since 2011, rendering images of some of the hotel’s glamorous guests, including Diane von Furstenberg, Sarah Jessica Parker and Dita Von Teese.
Under the programs, artists are often paid to stay and work at the hotels, letting guests interact with them and gain insights into their creations.
“It’s a very different approach than what I’ve seen previously in the art hotel genre,” said the Quin’s art curator, DK Johnston.
Johnston has been welcoming artists to live and work at the hotel in conjunction with a gallery show of their work since the hotel opened on West 57th Street in 2013. The program has included mostly street artists who, in addition to creating works to hang in the lobby, have drawn and painted on hotel doors, stairwells and other areas.
While sales are not the pri- mary focus, the art is selling.
Works from the London Police on sale at the Quin ranged from $800 to $7,500. Although the Quin does not take a cut of the sales, many hotels with artist-in-residence programs do.
The Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, which has a large Victorian art collection, started its artistin-residence effort in 2009 ‘‘to create new pieces, interact with guests and help enrich the local art scene”. Joseph Khairallah, chief operating officer of Mar- cus Hotels and Resorts, owners of the Pfister, said in an email. The current artist-in-residence is an abstract painter, Pamela M Anderson.
Marcus Hotels has expanded the program to two of its other locations, the Skirvin Hilton Hotel in Oklahoma City and the Lincoln Marriott Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln, Nebraska. The local artists do not live in the hotels but spend about 30 hours a week working in studios near the lobbies.
Residencies are not limited to visual artists. At the Hotel El Ganzo in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, the artist-in-residence program has included visual artists and musicians who record in the hotel’s studio and perform for guests on the hotel’s roof.
The Monteverdi Hotel and Villas, in Castiglioncello del Trinoro, in Tuscany, Italy, takes an even more eclectic approach, with an artists and scholars in residence program. Coming residencies include a jazz vocalist, an opera singer and choreographer, a set and costume designer and a neurologist, who will give lectures.
“We’re in a place, Tuscany, that gave birth to the Renaissance,’’ said Michael L Cioffi, who owns the hotel and created the program. “So you have this incredible flourishing of art and humanity and science and music all in this little area of the world.”