Art Hotels

Hotels built around a collection, a commission, or a working relationship with artists — where the art is part of the building rather than decoration hung on it afterwards.

Four art hotels

Art Hotels · 01

The Olsen

Melbourne, Australia

Named for the Australian painter John Olsen, this South Yarra hotel treats his work as its organising idea rather than its wallpaper. Prints and studies appear along corridors and in the lobby, and the building’s glass-fronted rooms lean into the same interest in light that runs through the paintings. It sits on Chapel Street, which means the surrounding blocks of galleries, cafes and small design shops do a good deal of the work of the stay. Rooms are apartment-like, many with kitchenettes, and there is a glass-bottomed pool cantilevered over the street below.

Chapel Street, South Yarra
Apartment-style rooms
Rooftop pool
Part of a small art-led group

Art Hotels · 02

Hotel des Arts Saigon

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

A tall hotel in District 1 that borrows the language of a mid-century Indochinese residence and fills it with a genuine collection — paintings, lacquerwork and sculpture gathered over years and hung throughout the public floors and guest corridors. The effect is closer to a private house that grew upward than to a gallery. A rooftop bar looks out across the city, and the lower floors keep a quieter, more furnished atmosphere with a library-like lounge and a French-leaning restaurant.

District 1
Owner’s collection on display
Rooftop bar
MGallery

Art Hotels · 03

21c Museum Hotel Bentonville

Bentonville, Arkansas, United States

The 21c model puts a free, publicly accessible contemporary art museum on the ground floor and the hotel above it, and Bentonville is one of the clearest expressions of the idea. Exhibitions rotate, the galleries stay open late, and guests move through them on the way to their rooms. The town itself has become an unlikely art destination, and the hotel functions as a second stop for visitors already there for the larger museum nearby. Rooms are plain and well-made, deliberately quieter than the spaces below.

Free public galleries
Rotating exhibitions
Ground-floor restaurant
Walkable town square

Art Hotels · 04

Casa Bonay

Barcelona, Spain

A restored 1869 building in the Eixample, reworked by local studios rather than an international design office — which is why the mosaic floors, shutters and iron balconies survived. Commissioned pieces, a bookshop-style lobby and a ground-floor cafe give it the feel of a neighbourhood building that happens to rent rooms. There is a rooftop bar, a herbal drinks counter off the entrance, and a general preference for Catalan makers throughout, from the ceramics to the bedding.

1869 building
Eixample district
Local design studios
Rooftop bar