Join our conversation with Alice Gray Stites to explore the exhibitions, artists, and visionaries behind one of America’s most unique contemporary art museums—21c Museum Hotel. From provocative sculptures and interactive installations to community events that encourage dialogue around complex social issues, the 21c Museum Hotels aim to spark wonder, conversations, and new ways of seeing the world.
Today, you’ll gain insight into how 21c creates meaningful interactions between art, culture, and community here in Bentonville, Arkansas and the new exhibition “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time,” opening February 16.
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Join our conversation with Alice Gray Stites to explore the exhibitions, artists, and visionaries behind one of America’s most unique contemporary art museums—21c Museum Hotel. From provocative sculptures and interactive installations to community events that encourage dialogue around complex social issues, the 21c Museum Hotels aim to spark wonder, conversations, and new ways of seeing the world.
Today, you’ll gain insight into how 21c creates meaningful interactions between art, culture, and community here in Bentonville, Arkansas and the new exhibition “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time,” opening February 16.
You can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, CastBox, Podcast Casts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and Podcast Addict.
Don't forget, Visit Bentonville is here to assist you in finding things to do, where to eat and stay, and find out what's going on in the city. Visit our website visitbentonville.com and subscribe to our enewsletter here.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Jaclyn House: 0:11
Welcome to a New American Town, a podcast proudly presented by Visit Bentonville. I am your host, Jaclyn House, broadcasting from Haxton Road Studios near Bentonville Square. Join us as we share captivating stories and updates from our city, connecting you with the locals that make this town worth visiting. Now, in case you didn't know, Bentonville is the home of some amazing artwork, and so joining me today is Alice Gray Stites, who serves as the Museum Director and Chief Curator at 21C Hotel. Welcome!
Alice Gray Stites: 0:44
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Jaclyn House: 0:47
For listeners who aren't aware, who haven't had the chance to discover the fabulosity that is 21C and the concept. Tell us a little bit about it.
Alice Gray Stites: 0:55
The 21C Museum Hotel was founded in 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky, by two preservationists and amazing visionary collectors of contemporary art. They wanted to find a way to increase accessibility to contemporary art for the public without building a private museum. So it turns out that marrying a museum with a hotel and chef-driven restaurant was the perfect recipe. Very soon, people started coming forward from other cities and towns saying, “Hey, that seems to work really well at engaging people around culture, revitalizing the heart of the city.” We want one in our hometown and, luckily for us, Bentonville was one of those places. Bentonville was the third one to open. There are now eight 21C Museum Hotels across the country. We opened here just about exactly 11 years ago.
Jaclyn House: 1:52
Do you know how Bentonville was selected? Was it more so someone here in Bentonville advocating for that?
Alice Gray Stites: 2:00
It was both on the part of those involved with 21C and people in Bentonville, aware of how much interest was being driven by Crystal Bridges and the growing art community in Northwest Arkansas, and we thought people who come to look at art and who come to do business want a place to stay where they can extend those discoveries and those experiences. So it turns out it was a really good idea.
Jaclyn House: 2:30
Yeah, let's talk about your role as curator.
Alice Gray Stites: 2:33
So, as chief curator, I oversee and curate the exhibitions, which change in each location once a year. I also oversee the maintenance of the core permanent collection. There are over 5,000 works in the 21C collection in all different media, and we also commission site-specific works for installations for each of the 21Cs. So you all probably have seen the basketball tree, or it's actually called Orange Tree, by Alexandra Arachaea, and the car that's covered with coins. So, those are two of, I think, five site-specific permanent installations that we created during the course of building. In fact, Bentonville's the only new building. All the other buildings are historic renovations. So we choose sites both inside and outside the building that don't lend themselves to being galleries for temporary exhibitions and don't lend themselves to being hotel rooms or restaurant space. But we want those permanent installations to act like beacons, drawing the public in and also connecting 21C to the public space, to the city itself.
Jaclyn House: 3:50
Sure, Do you think there is, besides the car, which I call the coin car that's outside and the basketball that you talked about? When people think about 21C here in Bentonville, what's the one thing that they always say? From our perspective, that's how they identify that they've been to 21C.
Alice Gray Stites: 4:08
Well, people have a wonderful range of responses, but I imagine that most people remember the green penguins.
Jaclyn House: 4:15
Yes, that's right. Yes.
Alice Gray Stites: 4:18
So each location, each 21C, has a different color penguin. These are actually artworks made by a European collective called Cracking Art. They call themselves that because they're also very environmentally active. They want to draw attention to actually the process of how we harvest petroleum, which is cracking the surface of the earth. So all of their artworks are oversized, brightly colored plastic animal sculptures made with recycled plastic. And actually, green was chosen by the people of Bentonville. We did a Facebook contest and asked people what color would you like to have in Bentonville? I think it's perfect because Bentonville is a combination of a vibrant and growing city and with a big emphasis on access to nature, so that green really expresses that.
Jaclyn House: 5:15
Yeah, I have a much greater respect for those penguins now. I was just thinking you know, oh, what a cool piece of art, but learning the history behind that is pretty cool.
Alice Gray Stites: 5:23
Well, and they're the only piece of art that we encourage people to touch, so you can take one to your room, one can come sit next to you at dinner, right.
Jaclyn House: 5:30
I've seen that and they do they.
Alice Gray Stites: 5:32
They move around the space quite a bit.
Jaclyn House: 5:35
They will just as long as they're within the building, not outside.
Alice Gray Stites: 5:38
Well, there are some that are permanently perched on the roof.
Jaclyn House: 5:41
Oh, okay.
Alice Gray Stites: 5:43
Yeah, so, but otherwise, as we know, penguins don't fly.
Jaclyn House: 5:48
Right. How do you go about selecting the artwork that's on display?
Alice Gray Stites: 5:53
So for the, for the exhibitions, the temporary exhibitions. They are usually group shows with a theme. So the new exhibition which opens this Friday, February 16, is called Fragile Figures: Beings and Time, and it's a show about contemporary portraiture and identity today. So I select work that addresses it very broadly, those issues. But there are many kinds of sub themes and different subject matter and connections that arise within those. It is a growing collection. So often we will highlight new acquisitions and for this exhibition there are a number of new works that have never have it been on display at a 21C before, but a couple of them viewers in Bentonville may be familiar with, because Yvette Mayorga, who will join us for the opening on Friday, had a solo exhibition at the Momentary. Last year 21C acquired two of the works that were shown at the Momentary and we're proudly including them or featuring them in Fragile Figures.
Jaclyn House: 7:07
Okay, what kind of experience would you like people to have as they are staying at 21C but then also just kind of making their way through and checking out the exhibitions?
Alice Gray Stites: 7:20
One of curiosity. I think that's what art sparks for people, especially contemporary art, because you see such a wide range of subjects and of media. You'll see videos, sculptures hanging from the ceiling, paintings, photographs, sometimes even virtual reality installations, and often people are surprised by what they see and intrigued, and I think that curiosity sets people off on a journey of discovery and learning that can be joyful, can be challenging, can be introspective, and especially when you're doing it in a public space, like a museum, and we never charge admissions, so we're very much open to the public Within a public space. When you're on that journey of discovery and learning, you're doing it often in the company of other people, and so it connects you and sparks conversation and hopefully makes it a memorable experience to which you want to return.
Jaclyn House: 8:23
Sure, I would say my own personal experience being at 21C especially if we're having dinner at The Hive and we come out and we're kind of looking around I love it seems like each and every time there's something very interactive about what's happening at 21C, one thing that my husband and I really love to do. I don't know if it's still there or not it's been a while since I've been, but there was a ping pong table and a mirror and we must have played that for, I feel like at least an hour. So we just had so much fun and we actually forgot where we were. I mean, we were just having so much fun. It was just like I totally forgot that we were in a hotel and that this is actually a piece of art.
Alice Gray Stites: 9:06
That's great. I love that story. That particular artwork, which is called Win Win by Tron Gia Win, is part of an exhibition that is now in Durham, North Carolina, called Truth or Dare, a reality show. What you're talking about is actually half a ping pong table with a mirror on the wall so that you can. It's nice that you played with your husband, but I think the idea is that you're playing with yourself. And that's never a win-win, is it? You're playing against yourself, so it is fun and we love that too. So this time I don't think there's anything that interactive, but there is, for example, a piece in the small gallery that's adjacent to the lobby where a video is projected onto a sculpture of Alita and the swan that sits on top of a mirror, so that the video, which shows storm clouds, bounces onto the wall and the soundtrack is really intriguing. So don't want to miss that.
Jaclyn House: 10:10
Yeah, absolutely. It also seems like when there's exhibitions or even just the artwork that's there, it's when you want to see. Everything seems very intentional. So you walk in, you're in the lobby, which is beautiful, but you look to your left or your right and there's always something that catches your eye. Was that intentional?
Alice Gray Stites: 10:29
Yes, that's absolutely intentional, and you just answered your own question about how do we, how do I select the artwork and how do we put it together. So you definitely want to draw people's eye into the space, but then make sure that whatever it is that you're first drawn to connects visually, and hopefully conceptually or thematically, to the artworks that are around it, so that, whether you know a lot about contemporary art or whether you are very new to it, you can kind of pull a thread. That's always. My goal is to make the exhibitions articulate, so that people can go on that journey without being mystified and you can read the wall text. But if you just want to look at things, hopefully you can find those connections.
Jaclyn House: 11:22
Yeah, Sure, tell us a little bit more about the Yvette Mayorga exhibition.
Alice Gray Stites: 11:27
Oh, so she's part of Fragile Figures. Her two works are part of Fragile Figures. One is a sculpture that consists of two figures, male and female, that hang from the ceiling. It is of her contemporary response to a famous painting by the 18th century painter, François Boucher, called the Setting Sun, and hers is the Setting Sun After Boucher, 1756. So the two figures are dressed in 18th century clothing and hairstyles, but wearing Mexican tribal boots you know, the ones where the toes curl up and they're holding balloons with very contemporary emojis and other motifs on them. That work and the painting that's next to it are both done in Yvette's signature Mexican pink. She was inspired by her own experience when she was growing up and going to visit family in Mexico. The way that a lot of the churches or other architecture is that kind of pale but bright, intense pink, and also its association with femininity. So a lot of her work is a response and a kind of subversion of the qualities that we associate with femininity. In her words, pink is a weapon of mass destruction that allows her to explore her own family history as well as look at what are the conditions for people coming to this country to pursue the American dream issues around labor and migration, and gender and identity, and I'm looking forward to her sharing more about this fascinating practice.
Jaclyn House: 13:19
Yeah, absolutely. I imagine that you have seen a lot of exhibitions come and go at 21C. Anyone of them stand out?I don't want to say favorite, but is there one that you feel like will always stay with you?
Alice Gray Stites: 13:34
Oh, that's such a good question and I struggle to answer because for me, the latest installation of an exhibition you know, it's always the new baby is the favorite. So right now I will say that this exhibition feels really resonant because, in addition to sort of doing a kind of geeky deep dive into art history because a lot of the works are directly relate to works from art history, like Yvette's there's also a theme about examining the ways in which today, we have to manage our different levels of identity. You know, because we use social media and we communicate on our computers, and so how we conceive and construct and project and what we're projecting and what we're receiving, and then the idea of this, that social media, kind of encourages us to have an illusion of intimacy, even with people that we don't know. So all of that has made our sense of how we know who we are and what we see about ourselves and others particularly fascinating and at times, very challenging. So living, you know, on screen and in real life, whatever that means, sometimes it makes it more complicated to understand, but there's still this kind of drive, a desire for connection and intimacy. I'm thinking back to the opening exhibition in Bentonville in 2013. Which was called hybridity, and I think that theme continues to resonate in so many different ways. It was a lot about the humans and animals, our relationship to nature and the influence of technology on how. What does it mean to be a hybrid and what do we? What does that look like and why do they come up so much in culture? This you know, things like cyborgs and half human, half animal and what that represents about the culture. I think that that will always sort of resonate and is a quality that you find in a lot of works in the collection.
Jaclyn House: 16:07
Yeah, good on you for remembering back. I mean because I know that you've handled so many, so I love that you were able to reflect back on that first one.
Alice Gray Stites: 16:16
Oh, you know, you know the first one is always so exciting and we so the exhibitions they do travel, and then you know when they then I'll like remix right, so we'll take a, we'll take artwork that was in an exhibition five years ago and put it in another exhibition. I mean, the great thing is that a lot of artwork has different kinds of meanings. That will, you know, sort of illuminate when they're in different kinds of conversations or subjects matter. The theme of the exhibition changes, changes how you interpret a particular work. But yeah, I well one that really that we're going to open in Chicago. That was last in Cincinnati later this spring. It's called Dress Up, Speak Up, regalia and Resistance and that's about contemporary artists who use costuming, props and other forms of dress to highlight various different personal, social and political challenges and to kind of demonstrate resistance to cultural erasure and that's one that is special for me
Jaclyn House: 17:28
Sure how long will people be able to experience the Event Mayorga exhibit?
Alice Gray Stites: 17:37
So fragile figures, beings and time will be here through 2024. So there's. There are 85 artworks in the show by 54 artists from all over the world, and so there's a lot to discover, so you got to come back more than once.
Jaclyn House: 17:54
Yes, absolutely. Now, because this is a podcast presented by Visit Bentonville, we have to ask what is one of your favorite things to do here in Bentonville?
Alice Gray Stites: 18:04
Well, I especially do love going to the Momentary. I love that they're open late, I think a couple of nights a week, at least one, and you can right now. I'm a big fan of their current exhibition, which includes this phenomenal film by Richard Moss that I highly recommend, and it's really fun to then go upstairs to that bar on the top. Yes, it's beautiful and the view, I mean you can't, you can't beat that.
Jaclyn House: 18:38
So that's your recommendation for when people come to Bentonville go to the Momentary and go up to The Tower Bar and, of course, visit 21C.
Alice Gray Stites: 18:45
Yes, and Crystal Bridges. There's just so much great art here and I hope that people will. I should mention that the opening event is this Friday night from 6 to 8 pm. I'll be talking about the exhibition a little bit and then I'll introduce Yvette Mayorga, who will share more about her artwork, her life, her practice, and it's free and open to the public. We'll be serving light refreshments from The Hive and just want to encourage everybody to come out on Friday night and enjoy themselves.
Jaclyn House: 19:21
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today. Very great conversation about 21C. I appreciate it.
Alice Gray Stites: 19:27
Thank you so much. I enjoyed it too.
Jaclyn House: 19:29
And we hope you have a chance to visit 21C Hotel to see this new exhibition during your next visit. Don't forget, Visit Bentonville is here to assist you or guide you or navigate you through things where to eat, where to stay and what's going on in the city, and also give us a follow on social media and check out our website, visitbentonville.com. Thanks for listening!