Six international boutique hotels for discerning travellers

Luxury is currently redefining itself: away from ownership and towards experience. Many hotels have understood this and are now turning to art as a key to greater atmosphere, identity and storytelling. A journey into the world of art hotels.

Luxury used to be simple: large beds, heavy curtains, thick carpets, a fruit basket that never ran out. Then came the era of oversized spas. The discerning guest has long since seen it all. What is being sought today is something else: the feeling of being in the right place at the right time. A top hotel does not simply sell rooms, but access — to special places, people and experiences. Its clientele wants an individual and meaningful structuring of time, tailor-made programmes and temporary formats that convey exclusivity and leave a lasting impression. It is no longer about larger suites; it is about meaning. And, ideally, about cultural authenticity. This is where art comes into play. Many hotels now call themselves art hotels — sometimes merely for marketing purposes. But hotels that are truly about art have to meet certain criteria and can be divided into several categories: hotels with major collections, usually because the owner is an art enthusiast; lifestyle temples that combine design and art in an original way; and refined establishments that form a kind of extension of a museum.

A particularly consistent example of the latter category is The Silo Hotel in Cape Town. It quite literally sits on top of a museum building: the legendary Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, MOCAA, whose recently deceased director Koyo Kouoh was also chief curator of this year’s Venice Biennale. Anyone staying at The Silo does not have to choose between culture and comfort; both are included. The hotel is an extension of the museum, the museum part of the stay. An elegant solution to a classic problem: how do you encourage people to engage voluntarily with contemporary art? You give them the room key.

An even more rigorous concept is pursued by MACAM in Lisbon. An impressive ensemble of historic industrial architecture and modern extensions, it houses both an exquisite hotel and a museum. Yet temple of the muses and place of rest are not separated here; the rooms are located in both the historic and the new parts of the building, and the gallery spaces also extend throughout the entire complex. The basis for this extraordinary art presentation is the vast collection of Armando Martins: Portuguese and international art by Marina Abramović, Ólafur Elíasson, Dan Graham and many others. Here, one can spend an arty weekend without leaving the building.

The same can also be true of certain design hotels. The Byblos Art Hotel Villa Amistà near Verona, for instance, looks like a historic villa that was first taken over by overambitious stylists and then by art. Works of international standing are not displayed there in a white cube, but between bed, bathroom and breakfast room. This can also be read as a form of democratisation — although one certainly has to pay a certain price for such intimate proximity to art. The Ham Yard Hotel in London is another such example. Artful interior design, bold colours, patterned fabrics, British craftsmanship in highly playful forms: already in the courtyard, visitors are greeted by a powerful bronze sculpture by Tony Cragg. Here, the transition between design and art installation is fluid; there is also a drawing room, a magnificent library and a theatre. According to The Times, it is ​“one of the 50 Best Places to Stay in the UK”.

Such hotels become particularly interesting when they breathe the spirit of their surroundings, when they make cultural specificities tangible and at the same time serve as meeting places and forums for the local scene. The Standard, East Village in New York is such a place: a cultural hotspot in downtown Manhattan, where artists not only find presentation spaces but can also develop projects with partners from the neighbourhood — such as the Garden of Collective Futures, created together with the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. For this public art project, the hotel’s garden wall was made available to ten international creatives — a lasting statement in public space.

Such initiatives have long since ceased to exist only in urban centres. Even classic beach holiday hotels can surprise with cultural engagement. The Minos Beach Art Hotel on Crete, for example, presents modern art with a relaxed unobtrusiveness — both inside the hotel and throughout its expansive garden grounds. A sculpture park with more than 70 objects stretches between the tasteful whitewashed bungalows; strange artistic creatures often peek out unexpectedly from amid the lush southern flora. This treasure was created systematically: as early as the late 1980s, Gina Mamidakis organised her first art symposium in order to define a new cultural identity for the Mediterranean region. Many further symposia followed, as did support programmes for students, artist residencies and the establishment of an art prize. It is an initiative that has grown over decades, one that was pioneering and whose long-standing expertise can still be felt today.

This is probably what matters if a hotel wants to understand itself as an art hotel: seriousness and credibility; an understanding of art not as décor, but as content, as conviction. As a means of questioning the world and creating new perspectives. A credible cultural profile does not emerge overnight. It requires curators, networks, patience and experience — all things that cannot easily be scaled or reproduced. For hotels, this can also be a gift. Through art, they create precisely what has become the scarcest resource in the luxury segment: a feeling of uniqueness. The possibility of experiencing things and encounters that cannot be had elsewhere. Art can unsettle or soothe, shake us up or move us — or simply be beautiful. And in the best case, it does exactly what a good hotel should do: it ensures that one leaves differently from how one arrived.

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