Oklahoma City
(This originally appeared in https://americanroads.net/) Travel and Leisure Magazine recently named Oklahoma City one of their “The 50 Best Places to Travel in 2020.” They are spot on.
Entertainment starts in your hotel if you stay at 21C Museum Hotel Oklahoma City. 21C Museum Hotel is a true contemporary art museum as well as a 135-room boutique hotel. Either incarnation could hold its own compared to any other art museum or hotel in the world.
This was once an early 1900s Fred Jones Ford Motor Company assembly plant that crafted Model Ts and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel is a 5 star one. All of the guest rooms feature high ceilings and large steel windows creating a bright cheerful atmosphere. Naturally, they have unique art in each room.
You have all the amenities here, a Spa with massage services, sauna and steam room, 24-hour fitness center, a business center, a laundry service if needed, and great free wifi. The hotel is pet-friendly. They offer complimentary shuttle service to downtown locations which can come in handy. Driving is not bad but parking can be a problem some places. Valet parking is paid but street parking is hard to find and usually have meters you need to feed.
For dining at the hotel, Mary Eddy’s Kitchen and Lounge is presided over by executive chef Jason Campbell.
The museum part of the hotel has some fantastic and original art. It is home to a flock of Purple Penguin sculptures by the Italian artist collective Cracking Art Group. The colorful birds mysteriously move around the hotel. They are in front of one room one minute and next time you look they have flocked elsewhere.
The museum is on the first floor but actually, it starts when you step into the lobby. One of the first things you see is a very realistic-looking sofa with a young child snuggled in sound asleep. The art ranges from sculptures like You Always Leave Me Wanting More, a series of multiple large red enamel arrows banded with led lights and pointing helter-skelter every which way on the top three floors, to paintings like the one of President Obama. There are mixtures like the hall filled with black and white sketches as a background and hung with paintings of women in sunglasses. At the end of the hall, there is a quartet of cutouts of flapper-era ladies in swimsuits cavort in front of a window. The art changes regularly so when you go you may see something different but equally interesting.
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