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Art Hotels

Three hotels where the art is part of the building’s daily life.

Three hotels · United States · Switzerland · Japan

Each of these properties treats art as an ongoing job. Exhibitions change. Rooms are shaped by artists. The collection says something about the hotel’s point of view.

They differ a great deal in scale and tone. One is a full-service city hotel, one is a small boutique on a pedestrian street, and one began life as a student residence. Read them as three answers to the same question.

  1. Hotel Zena

    Washington, D.C., United States

    Logan Circle is where it stands, at the start of the 14th Street corridor. Restaurants, bars and theatres line the blocks around it, and downtown is a short walk south.

    The collection is the reason to come. Every major piece is about women — their work, their voices, their influence — and much of it comes from artists with ties to the city. Portraits and installations run through the public floors instead of sitting in a single gallery room.

    Rooms are calmer than the lobby. Colour and pattern are used with restraint upstairs, so the art downstairs keeps its punch. A rooftop terrace gives the hotel an outdoor room for warmer months.

    • Collection centred on women
    • Logan Circle
    • Rooftop terrace

  2. ART HOUSE Basel

    Basel, Switzerland

    Small is the first thing to know. This is a boutique hotel with a few dozen rooms on Steinenvorstadt, a busy street inside Basel’s car-free centre.

    Exhibitions rotate through the building, run together with a gallery nearby. That keeps the walls from going stale between visits. Basel already has an outsized museum scene; the hotel reads as a pocket-sized extension of it.

    There is a rooftop bar above the street and a restaurant downstairs. The old town, the Rhine and the main museums are all reachable on foot.

    • Rotating exhibitions
    • Rooftop bar
    • Car-free city centre

  3. Hotel Anteroom Kyoto

    Kyoto, Japan

    A former student dormitory was converted to make it. The building sits in Kujo, a residential district south of Kyoto Station, well away from the temple crowds.

    Gallery 9.5 takes the space just inside the entrance, where a reception counter would normally go. Shows change through the year. Upstairs, a set of concept rooms were each designed by a different artist, and work hangs throughout the corridors.

    The courtyard holds a modern take on a dry rock garden. The mood overall is relaxed and slightly industrial, more studio than ryokan.

    • Former student residence
    • Gallery at the entrance
    • Artist-designed rooms