21C Interview
Gallery at the 21c Museum Hotel
No Kentucky visit is complete without visiting Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby and the largest, best-kept Victorian district in the US, and one-time hub of the bourbon trade, making it a prohibition party hangout for the rich and famous (and infamous, Al Capone frequently dropped by).
But Louisville is just as famous these days though for its award-winning pioneering boutique hotel, the 21C Museum Hotel, a 90-room boutique establishment where modern art blends seamlessly with modern comfort – or as one magazine put it, “one of the most ambitious unions of art and hospitality ever undertaken” – all set within and across five former buildings (including a tobacco repository and an old bank) in the historic downtown iron buildings of West Main Street, once called Whiskey Row.
On my visit I wasn’t quite sure if I was there to relax and sleep or to peruse the 5,000 sq ft of art space, sample the bizarre gents installation toilets and smirk at the signature red penguins.
Creative geniuses behind the project are Kentucky aristocrats and power brokers, the husband wife developer team Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, local tycoons who dreamed of revitalising the downtown Louisville scene. Some refer to them as the “Louisville Sluggers”, after the famous baseball bat whose museum resides just along the street. Big hitters, no doubt!
Brown and Wilson are to art and to Louisville what UK celebrity chefs like Rick Stein are to food and Cornish villages, albeit on a far grander, more avant garde scale.
Wilson told Travel + Leisure magazine recently: “We asked ourselves, ‘Can art stimulate business and generate economic development?’ We wanted to build a major project around art. And we wanted to be part of the revitalisation of downtown. So a hotel seemed a natural fit.”
It seems very natural. The art is provocative, but not unapproachable, Wilson once said; be it the art in the lobby, the toilet or in the bedrooms.
Says Brown: “People enjoyed seeing what was on the walls at home, and we thought at the hotel it would be a fun place to show it off and the public took it from there. We live on a corner of curiosity, it’s Alice in Wonderland, really. We love collecting today’s art, its very much about what is going on, recording what is going on.”
Wilson explains the various tastes on show, from photography to sculpture to multimedia installations. “Laura Lee has different tastes, she’s very much a photographer and painter, so she’s interested in precision and technique. I’m more interested in concept and story; it doesn’t have to be contained within lines, it’s more about emotion.
“We embrace all those who don’t know were they are going or what they are doing next .. we’re all about change, expression and beauty.”
On their hotel video, Wilson explains the signature penguins, which are dotted around the hotel in odd, bizarre places. “We saw them in Venice at the Biennale. They became an icon here, the public chose them more than us.
“We like sharing the art we have, like people to think about things – if people react to it emotionally, that’s what we are hoping for.” People certainly react, and why shouldn’t they – the couple’s art collection is worth $10m.
“The 21C is turning into an art community show, we show curios in the main lobby, share local artists with international artists. We’re constantly changing; learning and hopefully, getting better.”
Impressed developers have asked the couple to recreate the concept in other towns. They are not adverse but as yet, much-hoped for places in Austin, Texas or nearby Cincinnati have not materialised.
What has materialised and blossomed is their love of farming, specifically organic sustainable farming, be it their market garden produce or the bison. They bought a ranch recently to farm the animals, which surface at the cutting-edge hotel restaurant, the Proof on Main. Bison burgers are delicious, though I’m not sure about the bison marrowbones.
Wilson and Brown plan more museum hotels, touted for Austin, Texas, or nearby Cincinnatti, though none have yet surfaced. the creative couple want cities with a university and a youthful attitude. “We want to be somewhere that might be starving for art,” Wilson told Travel+Leisure.
See below for the full interview with Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson.
