Checking In - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 2

THE LOBBY: A ROGUE'S GALLERY

When the spiky-haired tourist had taken his photograph and proceeded out the big

glass front door, I hurriedly grabbed my bags and stepped out from under the
candy-striped awning and inside the Chelsea's famous lobby.
The place was stone quiet and more cramped than I'd envisioned. Artwork
was ubiquitous, paintings crammed up and down the yellow walls. There was the ornate
Victorian fireplace, its mantelpiece sporting Rene Shapshack's 1 bust of Harry Truman.
Of all people to honor on the mantel of the anti-establishment Chelsea Hotel! The little
bullet of a president from Missouri who dropped the atom bomb on Japan. The symbol
of true blue America fair-and-square, showcased prominently here at Bohemian Central.
No doubt the hotel's manager and part-owner Stanley Bard had long-since transcended the
irony. No doubt he could wax on about how, back in the day, he had bartered X amount of
Shapshack's rent for the statue and how much its value had multiplied over the years.
The quality of the Chelsea's lobby art is up for dispute. Its placement on the walls didn't
seem to follow any organizing principle. Larry Rivers' 2 pop-art masterpiece “The Dutch
Masters” hangs prominently in all its glory, but what's with the huge, goofy, amateurish
paintingofablackflowerpot?Totherightofthefireplace, there'sanicePhillipTaaffe 3 pin-
wheel abstraction, but over there, above the display case full of travel brochures, there's a
tinsel metallic curly-cue contrivance that hurts the eyes.
My brother-in-law Robert Campbell states it more plainly.

ROBERT CAMPBELL
In the lobby, you've got some of the crappiest artwork you ever saw in your life.
Some of it looks like artwork you'd see in the waiting room of a doctor's office.
But there's some stuff that's good. 4

The real reason for the art's spotty quality may be simpler.

MARY ANNE ROSE
Stanley took the best paintings home.

Stanley Bard, the hotel's manager and part owner for over fifty years, has denied accepting
artworks in lieu of rent payments (the hotel's co-owners would have probably disapproved).
Buttheresidentsknowbetter.Notonlywasthelobbychockfull,buteveryhallwayonevery
floor was lined with paintings, prints, and drawings. Every stairway was plastered with art-