Outside of the Box

No longer constrained by the walls of galleries or museums, cutting-edge artwork can now be viewed at stadiums, hotels and mixed-use real estate developments. But are people paying attention?

DALLAS’ SLEEK COWBOYS STADIUM, which opened last June, is the largest column-free room in the world and could easily fit the Statue of Liberty inside—even with the retractable roof closed.

But something else makes the stadium stand out: museum-quality art. Football lovers might be surprised to see, opposite a large stairwell, “Win!,” a text painting by conceptual artist Mel Bochner that lists rah-rah phrases—“Whomp ‘Em!/ Stomp ‘Em!/Wipe ‘Em Out!”—in huge type. Above a concessions stand selling beer and hot dogs, visitors who look up might wonder whether the yellow squares above their heads are just an architectural flourish; turns out they are part of French conceptual artist Daniel Buren’s “Unexpected Variable Configurations: A Work in Situ,” a collection of 25 black-and-white-striped, screen-printed aluminum plates on a yellow-painted wall.

The 19 works in the stadium, most of which were specially commissioned for the building, are part of a trend that’s taking place all over the country: Serious modern and contemporary art is busting out of the familiar confines of museums and galleries and invading commercial places like sports arenas and hotels.

But do people want to see a mobile by Olafur Eliasson, the Danish artist who famously conjured his own weather at London’s Tate Modern, while rushing into a football game? His “Moving stars takes time” hangs from the ceiling of a VIP entrance, and it’s unclear whether passersby can give it the time it deserves in that location. The vastness of the stadium and odd or obstructed sightlines can make for decidedly irregular viewing.

Gene Jones thinks it works, however— and she’s the boss. She and her husband, Jerry, have owned the Cowboys since 1989, and their interest in bringing contemporary artwork to the stadium is proof that, at the very least, the trend is not a conspiracy of radical art-world types. “Our own home is very conservative,” Gene says. “We own original Norman Rockwells and antiques.”

But when the Joneses decided to build a new stadium, “We wanted it to be contemporary and futuristic, and the art had to match that,” she says.

Gene and Jerry hired San Francisco-based advisor Mary Zlot to help them conceive an art program for the sports arena. “I’d never worked on building a collection for a stadium before,” says Zlot, who came to love the project, particularly because of the way it brought art to an entirely new public. “The first game of the season had 100,000 people,” she says. “Some museums don’t get that kind of attendance in a year.”

The new Florida Marlins ballpark in Miami (set to open in 2012) will eventually join Cowboys Stadium as another venue that makes art as much a part of the spectacle as the sports games. Snarkitecture, a New York-based collaborative firm founded by artist Daniel Arsham and architect Alex Mustonen, recently won the commission, and they will be designing unexpected, site-specific installations. Part of the project is inspired by features of the Marlins’ former athletic stadium, the beloved Orange Bowl; Snarkitecture plans to recreate the 10-foot-high letters from the Orange Bowl’s sign and playfully install them at odd angles throughout the new ballpark’s plaza.

“Some artists create in a vacuum and don’t care if anyone ever sees their work, and I’m not one of those,” Arsham says. “People who go to the stadium may not be the typical art viewers, and I want that interaction.” In many cases, of course, baseball fans at a Marlins game may be totally unaware that they’re breezing past a work created by an up-and-coming artist. Or they may know and not care, but such are the risks of placing art in new and unconventional contexts.

The tidal wave of art reaches into yet more nooks and crannies at CityCenter, the massive Las Vegas urban resort destination that opened in December and encompasses multiple hotels, residences and entertainment venues of all stripes, spread across 67 acres.

“We’re not only entertaining, we’re educating,” says Sven Van Assche, vice president of design for MGM Mirage Design Group, referring to the 15 major works bought or commissioned for CityCenter at a cost of $40 million (the total development cost a cool $8 billion). The collection includes “Silver River,” an 84-foot-long silver piece cast in the shape of the Colorado River by Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and “Damascus Gate Variation I,” a classic 1969 geometric abstraction by renowned modern painter Frank Stella. Both pieces are focal points of indoor lobby areas—Lin’s for the ARIA Resort & Casino and Stella’s for Vdara Hotel & Spa.

There’s also a Jenny Holzer LED sign, entitled “Vegas,” flashing with clever sayings and proverbs and snaking across 266 feet on the curved wall around ARIA’s north valet pick-up area—a seemingly random placement that CityCenter art advisor Michele Quinn says actually enlivens a potential dead zone. “There are people hanging around looking at it, and they’re not even getting a car,” she says.

Quinn acknowledges that some of the artists she contacted weren’t sure about showcasing their work in a casino setting. But once the architects were announced—respected names like Rafael Viñoly and Daniel Libeskind—“it put the artists at ease,” she says.

The idea of art in hotels and resorts is not new of course; no-name lithographs and prints have been around forever. What’s different now is that the level of seriousness has been ratcheted up several degrees. Original works are becoming de rigueur for high-end hotels. Two art collection routes predominate: the blue-chip collection, backed by big-name artists who have proven market track records and acclaim, and the avant-garde thought-provoker.

For nearly 10 years, San Diego-based consultant Joan Warren-Grady has been working almost exclusively on the first approach. Her acquisitions for the Four Seasons Hotel Miami, completed in 2003, have a Latin theme and include pieces by renowned painter and sculptor Fernando Botero.

“People traveling to a five-star hotel now expect to see an exciting art collection in the same way they expect to see a fabulous spa and a restaurant with an award-winning chef,” Warren-Grady says. “For developers at the highest level, you have to have it.”

Some boutique hotels have the ability to push the boundaries, both with provocative art and the placement of it. Seattle’s edgy Hotel Max features more than 350 original works by local artists and has turned each of its seven guest floors into a gallery of sorts—every floor is dedicated to a different local artist or photographer, whose enlarged works cover the room doors. (The fifth floor, with photos of Eddie Vedder, Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and Seattle’s grunge scene, is of particular interest to guests.) However, sometimes the hotel has gone too far: A painting of a woman nude from the waist up in the lobby caused such a stir that the hotel was forced to remove it (although another boundary-pusher remains in the ladies’ restroom).

From the beginning, using art just for decoration was never part of Hotel Max’s concept. “While curating it, I didn’t just go, ‘We need a beautiful piece of art to go with the curtains,’” says curator Tessa Papas, who made the selections. “People are shocked because it’s a hotel and there’s not a single print.” (One exception: a gorgeous signed David Hockey print of “Christopher Sherwood and Don” in the lobby.)

Perhaps one of the best features of this trend is that when the positioning of artwork is spot-on, people can enjoy it without the pressure they sometimes feel in traditional viewing spaces. “It gives people the opportunity to see art that they otherwise wouldn’t have seen in a comfortable, non-intimidating environment,” Warren-Grady says.

That may explain the strong feedback Gene has received on Cowboys Stadium. “People come up to us and say, ‘Thank you for doing this for your fans,’” she says.

From Zlot’s perspective, there doesn’t appear to be a downside. “There are great works of art in Cowboys Stadium, and the pieces all look fantastic in that architectural context,” she says.