A shiny Plymouth—navy blue with a creamy-yellow top—sits parked on the sidewalk outside a hotel at the corner of 7th and Main in downtown Louisville, KY. It boasts a shiny polish, as if it just came off an assembly line, even though it’s a 1950 Special Deluxe bearing license plates from Cuba. Missing all four tires, it rests atop a number of strategically placed, sculpted legs and feet.

Called “The Raft,” this is a unique work by Cuban artist Armando Marino that almost anywhere else outside Havana would appear strikingly out of place. Yet here, outside the 21c Museum Hotel, it fits right in.

“Certainly art hotels exist, [but] we have to always remember this is a museum that—oh, by the way—happens to have hotel rooms and a restaurant,” says Managing Director Craig Pishotti. “That is the distinguishing feature of 21c from other hotels such as the Drake in Toronto or the Ace Hotel in New York. The core of this is a museum that is made commercially viable and free to the public because of the commerce that it’s driving through the hotel and the restaurant.”

Now in its sixth year of operation, 21c features the works of living, 21st-century artists. It’s the brainchild of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, the founders who are avid art collectors.

“Their inspiration really was to revitalize downtown Louisville,” Pishotti explains. “They have a strong belief in preserving open space and they believe one of the ways of doing that is to make sure you have a thriving downtown urban core. Main Street was a bit dilapidated and crumbling. We had these five buildings and Steve and Laura Lee said, ‘Well, why don’t we take these five independent buildings, join them together and turn it in a museum, hotel, and restaurant?’

“Of course, when you do something unusual, it’s either brilliant or crazy. And, fortunately, it was the former,” adds Pishotti. Readers of Conde Nast Traveler ranked 21c the number one hotel in the U.S. and number six in the world in both 2009 and 2010. And, in an August 2011 report from Market Metrix, the property scored an impressive 96-percent approval rating.
“The average guest satisfaction rating is about 84.5 percent,” says Pishotti.

From the moment someone steps through the front doors of the 90-room boutique hotel, they realize this is no ordinary place. Opposite the reception area with its sculptures of the human form, there’s a gift shop much more focused on art books and prints than on newspapers and gum. And, straight ahead, visitors are embraced by more than 9,000 square feet of exhibits on two floors.

“I think we’re unique in the sense we have designated art space inside the same building as the hotel and the restaurant,” says Museum Director William Morrow. “There are other hotels that have art more as decoration. We’re actually programming museum-quality work and rotating exhibitions.”

April of 2011 heralded the arrival of “Cuba Now,” an exhibit of works by contemporary Cuban artists whose opportunities to display and share their creations are often limited by the Castro regime. As the curator, Morrow traveled to Cuba to meet with several artists and, in some instances, purchase pieces for the museum, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“You can walk in at any time,” notes Pishotti. “[Co-owner Laura Lee Brown] said art should be accessible. It should a part of everyday life and for everyone.”

“It’s not your typical museum where there’s security at every turn [with warnings such as] ‘Don’t touch that, don’t get too close.’ And it’s worked,” he says. “It’s a model that’s kind of been untried and never understood before.”

The museum, hotel, and restaurant—its name is Proof On Main—all have proven very successful and they’ve lived up to the original vision of helping revitalize downtown Louisville. The KFC Yum! Center—a large sports and concert venue—is a few blocks away. The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft is across the street. And, one block down the street, construction’s underway for an urban bourbon distillery.

“We really have a ‘museum row’ effect,” says Pishotti. “And 21c is at the center of it.”
Whether it’s a wide-awake art student wandering through at three in the morning or a hotel guest exploring shortly after check-in, people find themselves face-to-face with works in various media, often created by young artists who’ve yet to make names for themselves.
“That’s the beauty of working with young artists. They’re on the cutting edge and there isn’t a place for them to show,” says museum director Morrow.

“There’s no other museum in the U.S. devoted to showing work of the 21st century,” he adds. “Steve (Wilson) and Laura Lee (Brown) very much are into working with living artists and supporting them.”

The Louisville property has been so successful that Brown and Wilson have two similar projects in the works. A 21c will open in Cincinnati in late 2012, while the couple’s third property—in Bentonville, AR—is expected to begin welcoming guests during the first quarter of 2013.

“Cincinnati is currently under construction,” says Pishotti. “It’s a renovation of a historic building across the street from the Aronoff Center for the Arts and next to the Contemporary Arts Center. That is a 156-room hotel. [The Bentonville property] is similar in size to Louisville. It’s 103 rooms. The interesting element there is that it’s about a quarter of a mile from the new Crystal Bridges Museum that Alice Walton (an heiress to the Walmart fortune) has founded.”

Pishotti adds, with regard to the Arkansas plans, that the new museum hotel will fill a need for upscale lodging in Bentonville, to which vendors from around the world flock to meet with Walmart buyers.

“All of the components you have in Louisville will also be represented in the additional properties, although each one will have its own unique space and character,” he says.

Click here to view more images.