The Alexander Hotel, Art Imitates Indianapolis

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/garden/at-the-alexander-hotel-art-imitates-indianapolis.html?ref=garden&_r=2&

By EVE M. KAHN

Indianapolis Museum of Art curators have filled a nearby hotel with contemporary art that resonates with and sometimes mocks the region. At the Alexander Hotel, designed by Gensler, which opens Monday, windows here and there are covered with the artist Kim Beck’s vinyl silhouettes of local weeds (above). The sculptor Sonya Clark built a portrait of the Indianapolis hair-care tycoon Madam C. J. Walker out of 3,840 combs (top right). Paul Villinski’s wall-mounted installation is made from vinyl records by musicians including the Gary, Ind., native Michael Jackson (top left). And Mark Fox’s stream-of-consciousness text, cut from reflective stainless steel, notes that John Dillinger is buried about seven and a half miles from the Alexander, and that hotel rooms are zones of “mirrors and copulation.”


The Alexander