From ugly duckling to immersive art piece, the “Asleep in the Cyclone” room at 21c Museum Hotel downtown is a 1960s timewarp you can sleep in.
Its humble beginnings as an unpopular basement hotel room changed in 2013 when the hotel commissioned New York-based artist collective Jonah Freeman + Justin Lowe to create a site-specific art piece guests could book like any other hotel room.
The main attraction inside the 500-sqft room is a colorful geometric ceiling sculpture reminiscent of both a quilt and stained glass. It begins above the doorway and stretches overhead across the multi-level, carpeted room before landing on the back wall behind the king-size bed.
Everything in the room, aside from the usual hotel amenities, were designed and hand-picked by Freeman and Lowe. Here are a few things of note:
- Record player with selected records — we spotted Ten Years After and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
- Repurposed barn wood
- A glass curio cabinet filled with fictional books and 1960-era art
- Curated blankets and linens
- Antique writing desk and rocking chair
The Museum Manager for 21c Louisville, Hunter Kissel, said the room references a former 1960s artist commune in southern Colorado called Drop City. The settlement’s structures, where the artists lived and worked, were based off Buckminister Fuller’s geodesic domes — Think: Epcot’s Spaceship Earth and those metal playground domes you used to climb as a kid.
“Not only were they building the domes out there in Colorado, they were finding materials, old buildings, and spare parts to make these things, so they do have a quilt-like pattern to them that this room does, too,” said Hunter.
The Cyclone room — which can be booked for about $664 per night — is the only Jonah Freeman + Justin Lowe installation in Derby City.
DYK: Since Louisville is home to the flagship 21c Museum Hotel, it has more site-specific works than any other location. Aside from the Cyclone room, a few others in LOU include the curbside red gemstone limousine, “Wheel of Fortune”, and the “Text Rain” exhibit by the elevator.
