Designed by the New York-based architect Deborah Berke, who was also behind the Manhattan dealer Marianne Boesky’s West 22nd Street gallery and penthouse project, the building contains a 9,000-square-foot space for nonselling shows that include loans from museums. The art program, which is run by the couple’s foundation, is partially funded by revenues from the hotel and adjoining restaurant. The model has proved profitable: 21C leads the local market in terms of occupancy and room rates and has seen 150,000 people come through the door since it opened, says its director, William Morrow.

The current economic downturn could slow the art-hotel trend, but for now, it is still going strong. Wilson and Brown, for example, have been approached by developers in Chicago, Cincinnati, Fort Worth and Austin who want 21Cs in their cities. Exhibitions in these properties, which would travel from one to another, as in a museum tour, would draw on the foundation’s collection of more than 2,000 works and, like the shows at the Louisville location, borrow from other institutions.

In bringing art to the broader public, this version of the art hotel has much in common with iconoclastic contemporary-art museums such as the Palais de Tokyo. As Le Méridien’s Jérôme Sans explains, the Palais aimed to yank art from a typical institutional setting and weave it into the fabric of society, making it accessible by opening at unconventional hours and providing a lively bar. With nonprofit support for the arts very likely dwindling in the near future, this mission could well be kept alive by the hospitality industry.

"Art Checks In" originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2009 Table of Contents.