FEATURE
Hospitality Art By Ola Diab
Art is becoming an essential part of a hotel’s essence and décor with many hotels hiring curators to help them tell their story through art.
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xperience the significant role art plays in the hospitality industry at Katara Towers. Symbolically intertwined with Qatar’s heritage, the iconic towers in Lusail City are an architectural translation of Qatar’s national seal, representing the traditional scimitar swords. The towers are home to Qatar’s newest and most luxurious hotels, Fairmont Doha and Raffles Doha, each arching skyward with dramatic poise, creating a sense of wonder with curated beauty that unfolds in every space with abundant masterful artistry. As one of their many ways to give guests next-level hotel experiences, the hotels have invested greatly in art by being one of the few hotels in Qatar with an art curator, also known as a hotel curator, creating aesthetic spaces and forming lasting connections with guests.
The role of an art curator Tal Danai is the art curator at Katara Towers. ‘The role of an art curator, being a relatively new discipline in hotel design, is still somewhat fluid. Some see that role as an offspring of interior design, with the responsibility of the art curator to decorate the space created by the designer,’ he said.
stories. We form narratives based on the history and culture of a place or concoct original ones to stimulate and enhance a guest's experience,’ he said. ArtLink offers professional art curation and provision expertise in the hospitality sector. It is now the leader in its market and has completed over 140 hotel and cruise ship projects worldwide. ‘We promote cultures and learn to speak specific brand language for each project. We team up with academic institutions for research of emotional and cognitive triggers and tap into the creativity of artists in a journey to layer more brushstrokes on our storied canvases. We challenge fabricators and technology providers to help us materialise our own imagination and that of the artists we engage. We conduct a symphony that comes to life when guests encounter the art and craft collections and are touched by them. We have the best job in the world,’ he said.
Tal Danai Danai is the founder and CEO of ArtLink, which he founded in 1996 to develop a pioneering global market segment for young and emerging art and make the art of our time available, accessible and affordable to the world. ‘For us, the art and craft selected for a project is a separate layer from those developed by architecture, interior design and the other disciplines contributing to a hotel's environment,’ he said.
‘We challenge ourselves in researching each location with the aim of extracting its inherent natural ©
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