21C Museum Hotel - Louisville

700 W Main St, Louisville, KY 40202, United States

https://www.21cmuseumhotels.com/louisville/

21c Museum Hotel Louisville is a combination boutique hotel, contemporary art museum and chef-driven restaurant. Founded by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, contemporary art collectors and preservationists, 21c Louisville was the foundation for the group’s mission to engage the public with contemporary art and support the revitalization of American downtowns.

Opened in 2006, 21c Louisville converted five 19th century warehouses into a 90-room property with more than 9,000 square feet of exhibition, meeting and event space and presents rotating curated exhibitions, interactive site-specific art installations and a full roster of cultural programming. Exhibition space is open to the public free of charge. 21c Louisville is home to the award-winning restaurant Proof on Main, which showcases a unique, straightforward take on approachable cuisine, inspired by the flavours of the season’s best produce from Kentucky and the surrounding area.

Exhibitions

Still, Life! Mourning, Meaning, Mending

According to chronos, or the measurable, linear perception of time, nearly two years have passed since we were swept into the maelstrom of the pandemic, wherein we continue to confront and reckon with loss, injustice, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Within the intersecting crises of Covid-19, civic protest, and the climate crisis, we are called to mourn and memorialize; to find meaning within persistent uncertainty, and to address the legacy and reality of injustice and inequity. The collective experience of time warping or wrinkling during periods of isolation and instability is reflected in works that highlight the notion of the glitch, and which posit new pathways and possibilities for the future. Featured artists include Portia Munson, Cosmo Whyte, Ebony G. Patterson, Heidi Lau, Zak Ové, Omar Victor Diop, Cajsa von Zeipel, and others.

 Fallen Fruit: The Practices of Everyday Life

David Burns and Austin Young, who work as the duo Fallen Fruit, explore and transform located geographies and narrative histories at the intersections of public and private spaces. This site-specific commission is inspired by a wide range of definitions of “the public,” from the stranger or passerby to the vast public spaces of the Internet, and includes collective histories found in native and creationist mythologies, generational knowledge, and public and private archives.

“We created a work of art in the form of an art installation at Proof on Main that celebrates people and place using source material from architectural salvage yards, historical images, personal diaries, and ephemera from Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana,” explain the artists. “We realize that it is not one particular story that tells the truth about a place. Instead we believe that community is formed by many different people’s stories and collectively these stories about place and people form the cultural bonds we celebrate and honor through local traditions and more.” Constructed from dozens of individual photographs, texts, and objects, their research-based work is intended to celebrate the culture of place. The selection of each photograph, wall treatment, or object is deliberate; even the seemingly obtuse or misplaced is carefully chosen to create contrast and to explore conflicting shifts in meaning. The artwork intimately explores the boundary of what is “public” and what is “private.” 

Fallen Fruit’s immersion into the people and places that shape community reveals a universal, defining aspect of the human condition, hunger—to be fed, to be seen, to belong, to be loved. The persistence of these desires fosters the continuity of ritual: the practices of everyday life don't really change - we eat, drink, we talk, we congregate and celebrate in ways that would be recognizable to our forbears at least a century ago, and these acts retain meaning and promise.