IAN SCHRAGER

Even in Schrager’s earliest properties, art was always a focal point—starting with the 105 black-and-white flower photographs he commissioned Robert Mapplethorpe to do for the rooms at Morgans Hotel back in 1984. For the Palladium, the nightclub he opened in 1985, he commissioned Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf to create pop-art installations for the dance floor and enlisted Francesco Clemente to paint frescoes on the domed ceilings. For the Paramount Hotel in 1990, he transposed details from Vermeer paintings onto oversized headboards in the guest rooms. But it was his Gramercy Park Hotel in 2006 that radically re-envisioned the concept of a hotel, with an art collection so serious that it rivaled those of many of Chelsea’s blue-chip galleries: “I wanted to bring art that was once relegated to museums and private collections into public spaces where everyone could enjoy it,” Schrager explains. So, with the help of Julian Schnabel, he covered the lobby with massive abstract canvases by Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Damien Hirst (many on loan from collectors like the Mugrabi family and Peter Brant) to create a space that made guests feel as if they were staying in a modern-day version of Peggy Guggenheim’s art-filled Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on Venice’s Grand Canal.

-Conde nast Traveler

May 28 2015