Rooms With a View—of Art

by Teresa Politano   
Posted December 19, 2007

Tourists visit New York’s famed Carlyle Hotel sometimes just to peek at the bar murals painted by Ludwig Bemelmans. The newly opened Heldrich in New Brunswick—a 248-room hotel and conference center with a restaurant and bar, luxury condos, plus office and retail space—hopes to generate the same kind of curiosity for New Jersey artists.

The bar inside Christopher’s Restaurant at the Heldrich, for example, features a 6-by-12-foot photorealist painting (above) of New Brunswick at dusk by Tim Daly of Hoboken. The Heldrich commissioned Daly to create work for all the guest rooms as well.

In the hotel lobby, visitors can see a stunning 10-by-10-foot glass sculpture, The Golden Apples of Hesperides (right), by J. Kenneth Leap of Runnemede. In all, the Heldrich complex has 850 works on view, many obtained through partnerships with the Zimmerli Museum and Rutgers University.

Rutgers photographers Jason Francisco and Tony Masso have an exhibit on the main conference level documenting construction of the Heldrich in various stages of completion.

“Art is—and can be—deeply engaged with the actual world,” says Francisco.  And you can’t take a nap in a museum.