Denver’s ART hotel, where it feels like you’re sleeping in a gallery full of modern masterpieces
From the walls to the bed linen to the cocktails at the bar, this hotel - standing out like a diamond in Colorado city’s cultural centre – is infused with the work of contemporary American artists
What is it? The mirrored, faceted facade of The ART hotel shimmers like a diamond set among the venerable cultural institutions of Denver, Colorado’s Golden Triangle Museum District. Curator Dianne Vanderlip, formerly of the Denver Art Museum, composed The ART’s 50-piece collection of paintings, sculptures, photography, mixed media and large-scale installations.
The chic, 165-room boutique hotel is adjacent to the Denver Art Museum, History Colorado Centre and Clyfford Still Museum, and within walking distance of the Denver Centre for Performing Arts and the US Mint and Colorado State Capitol building, both of which are open for tours, as well as pulsing Larimer Square’s shops, restaurant and bars.
What art adorns The ART? Vibrant, thought-provoking and whimsical 20th- and 21st-century works exhibited throughout the hotel encourage exploration. With masterpieces at every turn, a stay is like playing a game of hide-and-seek with famous artists.
Leo Villareal, known for The Bay Lights (2013), a 2.9km display along the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, created the hotel’s dazzling, ever-changing 22,000-LED-light installation, which illuminates the port cochère ceiling. In the entrance, guests encounter Sol LeWitt’s bold geometric painted wall work and Frank Gehry’s Fish Lamp fashioned from petal pink Formica scales. Mary Ehrin’s Molten Meteorites metallic-leather-covered rocks resemble massive gold nuggets and allude to Colorado’s gold rush.
Avant-garde artists’ videos play in the lifts. Natural light floods the fourth-floor lobby, exhibiting an Edward Ruscha woolly-worded tapestry, a life-sized horse bronze by Deborah Butterfield, playful, check-patterned chubby bear paintings by Sean Landers and a wild-eyed, rearing Mustang lithograph by Luis Jiménez, who you may have already encountered at the Denver International Airport, home to his 9.8-metre-tall sculpture Blue Mustang (2008).
