April Bey’s “Colonial Swag” in the lobby introduces the new 21c exhibit.
Credit: Iron Lotus Creative / Stephen Ironside
Art hotels are a booming business these days, with some reaching new levels of outstanding curatorship. Cue the small 21c group of art hotels in southern and midwestern states for being among the finest. In Northwest Arkansas, the 104-room 21c Bentonville opened a dozen years ago at roughly the same time that the city’s celebrated Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was established. With the new show Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance, the property continues to make a name for itself in this now major art city.
As they are open to the public, and more so for the quality of curation, the 21c properties can justifiably call themselves museums. Having rotated through several 21c properties, Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance will continue drawing visitors to explore Bentonville, a city booming culturally, and economically in no small part due to the Walmart headquarters effect.
The show is visually stunning, for sure, but thematically engaging in such a way that a hotel guest over several days will wish to take their time and explore various artists bit by bit. Fine background notes accompany each piece and add greatly to the viewer’s experience in what are deceptively complex works of history and society, race and gender, all presented in rich tapestries, stunning sculptures, and powerful photographic prints.
Athi-Patra Ruga’s “Proposed Model of Francois Benga” is among the many works in a side gallery.
Credit: Iron Lotus Creative / Stephen Ironside
Lobby As Launching Point
As you check in, a signature Kehinde Wiley huge and bright oil on canvas draws your eye behind reception. Entitled Support the Rural Population and Serve 500 Million Peasants (2007), the work references the Maoist propaganda that launched the mid-’60s Cultural Revolution, though here a young Black man in red hoodie and medical bag over the shoulder stands in for a Chinese doctor who would have been sent to the countryside..
To the right of the long wooden reception desk, the even longer Ebony G. Patterson Brella Krew (2013) piece is a hand-embellished photo tapestry that offers much to unravel beyond its basic Jamaican dancehall culture theme. The triptych shows members of crews adorned in all manner of glittery and fabulous fashion, right down to pearls and a parasol.
In the fine small catalog to the exhibit, Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites introduces the aim of the show as: “Reimagining, restating and re-performing imagery from Renaissance painting to present-day media, these artists expose the gaps and fissures in both art and history, illuminating the mutable nature of personal and collective memory to redefine cultural visibility.” Yes, it’s a lot to unpack, and you haven’t even gotten to your 21c room yet.
Vivek Vilasini’s “Last Supper—Gaza” is a large-format photographic image.
Credit: Iron Lotus Creative / Stephen Ironside
Facing the reception desk, Bahamian-American artist April Bey’s COLONIAL SWAG: If You Meet Me As a $100 Bitch Me Supposed to be a $150 Bitch by Next Week is lush and beautiful, produced as the panel note tells us in jacquard woven textiles, with hand-sewn fabric and sequins. More pointedly, Bey is addressing race, gender, colonialism, all through the prism of a fine-looking AI-generated figure.
Off the main event space Gallery One is filled with more than a dozen framed and sculptural works. Another piece that requires getting right up and close to see its rich layers, Stan Squirewell’s Shoney (2021) is a mixed media collage of a regal woman in finery made of fabric scraps of high-end labels. The artist wants you “to question what you think you know, what you’ve been told, and what you believe.”
Standing on a mirrored stage encircled by light bulbs, Athi-Patra Ruga’s figure in the statue Proposed Model of François Benga (1906-1957) is brought to vivid life all covered in fake flowers and jewels. It’s an homage to a forgotten queer icon, the Josephine Baker dancer Benga.
Among works that will cause you pause every time on the way to the elevator, Vivek Vilasini Last Supper—Gaza is the Leonardo tableau depicted here in a stunning photo of women wearing niqab covering. Other works address religious icons as well, and Native American and Asian themes appear in a show so extensive that guests can just wander into meeting rooms to discover even more pieces.
Also, until June, the show Elevate at 21c presents local artists around Bentonville. Joli Livaudais’s site-specific All That I Love installation on view in the Hive Lounge is a delightful series of origami beetles crawling on the walls and ceiling, their folds consisting of photographic elements.
In the permanent collection, FLOW 5.0 is a deceptively simple work by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde that engages your senses in fun ways. An array of small laptop-sized fans whirl as you trigger their sensors on approaching the elevator, creating a wind effect and casting distinct moving shadows on the wall behind. Just try to stop looking at it.
The 21c lobby is filled with art, as seen here in the Ebony G. Patterson “Brella Krew” tapestry.
Credit: Iron Lotus Creative / Stephen Ironside
And There’s More Than Art
The 21c doesn’t only host art, but also one of Bentonville’s top chefs in Arkansas native Executive Chef Micah Klasky who is behind The Hive restaurant. Bar on one side that serves Bentonville breweries for good measure, dining on the other, it’s a casual atmosphere with a locally sourced menu.
The Hive and Chef Klasky are also deeply engaged in community. A recent successful guest chef and auction evening raised funds for the No Kid Hungry advocacy organization that drew a big crowd to sample dishes from top chefs from Texas, Colorado and North Carolina. Last year, Klasky also cycled a 300-mile fundraiser for the advocacy group’s mission.
Fans of the Louisville-based 21c hotel company know and admire that the firm of TenBerke architects has lovingly resurrected historic buildings from warehouses and car factories to banks, of which currently seven are in the group. Bentonville is the only one to have been started from scratch.
21c fans also love the hotel group’s signature penguin figures that appear in all manner of forms from baubles in the gift shops to take home (along with Malin+Goetz toiletries) to four-foot-tall plastic versions placed all around. Each property has an assigned color, with Bentonville’s being lime green; don’t be surprised if the elevator door opens and one is waiting to ride with you.
As always in 21c hotels, you’ll be greeted by lots of penguins.
Credit: 21c Museum Hotels
Who needs a bedside Bible in your room when you can scroll through a copy of the delightful volume Art is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists (Phaidon). “If I could find anything blacker than black, I’d use it,” said J.M.W. Turner.
You might choose one of the four-story property’s corner suites for town views. As Bentonville makes itself ever more livable, the street in front of the hotel is torn up for now as it gets turned into a pedestrian promenade. The Crystal Bridges art museum is just a 20-minute walk away through a woodsy trail. If Bentonville is filling with modern new buildings, look just in front of the hotel to the early 20th-century county jail building. Hopefully, the handsome, but forlorn brick building will soon get the TLC it deserves.
The 21c Bentonville isn’t just about art and food, but good friends, as in furry ones. In their Pet Sleepover Program, you can invite over a shelter pooch from the city’s marvelous Best Friends Animal Society that works to keep dogs from kill shelters. You give love and get love at 21c.
The show Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance will be up until until January, 2026.
See also previous stories on the 21c Cincinnati and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
