- - Why keep art behind closed doors? If I put it in bedrooms then only the person staying there would see it. And although we have interesting things and original things in the bedrooms the most important pieces are always going to be in the areas where everyone can enjoy them. The Crosby Street Hotel is in downtown SoHo and so SoHo means South of Houston. It's in a cobbled street, it used to be a warehouse district but of course now it's gentrified. All the artists have actually moved out but it's art that inspired us to build the Crosby Street Hotel and our collection started there. Our latest pet is Crosby the Cat. Crosby the Cat is a Botero and he is a big boy. He's actually New York sized. When you think of New York everything has to be bigger and better and certainly Crosby the Cat fits that bill perfectly. He's very popular with guests, we have to stop people climbing all over him and he actually has become quite a landmark in his own right. He doesn't really belong to us, he belongs to the whole street and everyone in the area. Fabulous, Crosby the Cat. As you come into the lobby I needed a painting which would draw your eye along to the end of the lobby and I needed something strong in that position and the Callum Innes in its graphic abstract way fulfils the purpose. In the lobby above the most beautiful wooden bench which is made out of driftwood, is a painting that took five men to hang it because it's so heavy. The Anselm Kiefer, I'm sure it's made out of tarmac. Most Anselm Kiefers I've seen have either got a park bench hanging from it or an aeroplane, so actually just having a fern in the centre of it is quite nice. The original inspiration for the hotel and the artwork in the hotel was art inspired by the written word and there are a number of pieces within the lobby area which actually notify this. We have a 3D piece by Jack Milroy and we have another artwork, a sculpture, by Jaume Plensa. I bought the Jaume Plensa in Basel at the art fair which is a great place to go because there's everybody in the whole world there so you can see art cheek by jowl. Every single dealer is going to be there, good, bad and indifferent and in a way it's a whole world within itself. Crosby Street Hotel is set back from the street so you see all the panes of glass. To the very right it's a staircase going down so you have a wonderful wall to display art and here we decided yet again, art inspired by the written word. The letters by Peter Blake, spelling out Crosby, and then Street is actually spelt out in coins, American coins, and you look through it and it tells the story itself. As you walk through the hotel, you'll notice that there are dogs all round the building. I began to realise that New Yorkers love their dogs, so that became a secondary theme within the hotel. In the lobby we have Justine Smith's fabulous sculptural dogs covered in Beano comics and then of course the first artist that we found and that is Peter Clark. Dotted around the hotel you'll see his work, both large and small. There's a fabulous poodle wearing very winged glasses and an adorable sausage dog. And the best thank you note that you could ever get, from he and his wife. Peter Clark collages the actual animal out of these little tiny scraps and bits and pieces that other people would think is absolute rubbish. So here in the drawing room we've got two Francois Bard paintings. One is of Simone, which is his Jack Russell terrier and the other is of his friend, I don't know if it's male or female, but they're presiding over the room. The drawing room at Crosby Street Hotel has to be a welcoming room. Once sitting down you're going to be aware of the artwork around you and actually holding the room together are the Mimmo Paladinos. They're very, very strong. To me it doesn't actually matter what they're saying, the fact is that they're the strength within the room. We finished building the hotel in 2009 and it's settled into its space like someone settling into a very comfortable armchair and in that way it looks like the art is a part of the place, rather than a gallery or somewhere where you just stand, walk around and go out. It's actually a home and it's a home from home and that's how the art should look within a hotel.