As any tourist knows, the choice of hotel can make the difference between a dismal holiday and a doozy, and if you travel a lot for work, hotels can become a defining feature of your life. A new exhibition, Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life, at the Vancouver Art Gallery goes further, describing such places as the “defining structure of the modern age”. We’ll let you chew on that one for yourselves, but they certainly play a big part.
The hotel is certainly an interesting junction of architecture and sociology, and both these aspects have been examined by exhibition curator and author Jennifer M. Volland. Inspired by the 1932 Hollywood film Grand Hotel, which like the less favoured Four Rooms from the 1990s tells the interlocking stories of guests, this exhibition spans three centuries, two floors, and was itself six years in the making. Drop in without a reservation until 15th September.
Peter Simon,
Harry Smith in front of the Chelsea Hotel,
New York, 1973.
© Peter Angelo Simon
Raffles Hotel, Singapore,
Luggage Label, 1940.
Courtesy of Raffles Hotel Singapore
Ace Hotel Portland Lobby, 2007.
Photo: Jeremy Pelley.
© Ace Hotel Group
The Beat Hotel Café, c.1957,
silver gelatin print,
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery,
Gift of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft.
49er Spartan Mansion,
El Cosmico, Marfa, 2012.
Photo: Nick Simonite
Bruce Price,
Banff Springs Hotel, 1888
Photo by Canada, Dept. of Interior /
Library and Archives Canada, c.1909 /
PA-040647
Imperial Hotel, Japan,
Luggage Label, c. 1935.
Photo: Rachel Topham,
Vancouver Art Gallery
Advertisement for Hilton Hotels
published in LIFE, December 23, 1957.
Courtesy of the Hospitality Industry Archives,
Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel & Restaurant Management,
University of Houston.
Photo: Rachel Topham,
Vancouver Art Gallery
Bruce Jones,
Poseidon Undersea Resort, Fiji,
forthcoming.
