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Condition Report: Alice Gray Stites’s Art of Hospitality

A discussion with the top curator of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson’s boutique museum-hotel chain, about the importance of bringing art to the public and the complicated logistics of their hybrid hospitality business.

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Alice Gray Stites 21c Hotels
"You have exhibitions on view, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, free and open to the public. In that way, 21c is very much a museum, a cultural institution, that is focused on serving the public," Alice Gray Stites tells Puck's Marion Maneker. Photo: Courtesy of 21c Museum Hotels
Marion Maneker
February 12, 2025

A full decade before Iwan Wirth and Manuela Hauser launched Artfarm—the hospitality and development company behind their famed Manhattan gallery-restaurant hybrid, Manuela—the major contemporary art collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson founded 21c Museum Hotels: a boutique museum-hotel chain that offers the broader public a way to experience living with art, at least temporarily. Over the past 20 years, the award-winning business has expanded from its initial location in Louisville to Bentonville, Durham, St. Louis, Lexington, Cincinnati, and Chicago.

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