21c Museum Hotels

21c Museum Hotels is a Louisville-based combination contemporary art museum and boutique hotel chain. As of 2015, it manages four properties in Louisville, Kentucky; Cincinnati, Ohio; Bentonville, Arkansas and Durham, North Carolina. 21c Museum Hotel was voted among the Top 10 Hotels in the World in the Condé Nast Traveler Readers' Choice Awards in 2009, 2010 and 2011. It was also voted as the No. 1 Hotel in the South in the 2012 Condé Nast Traveler Readers' Choice Awards. The Cincinnati 21c hotel was named the top hotel in America in 2013 by Conde Nast Traveler's annual reader survey, and 11th in the world.

History

21c Museum Hotel was launched in 2006 by philanthropists and art collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson. The pair had seen farmland and rural landscapes fall to development while the historic buildings of Louisville's downtown sat vacant. They created 21c in Louisville's downtown arts and theater district to support both urban renewal and regional agriculture, and have developed partnerships with local growers to supply produce and ingredients for the Proof on Main restaurant and bar.