Art as Infrastructure: How Cultural Programming Is Redefining Luxury Hospitality


From artist residencies to institutional partnerships, Oram Hotels is testing a new model where culture drives place-making. Michal Rzepecki

This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. In San Diego, Oram Hotels is testing a provocative idea: what if hospitality didn’t just display art, but actively participated in its creation?

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At the center of this experiment is the Granger Hotel, a Romanesque landmark built in 1902 and meticulously restored as a design-forward cultural anchor. As San Diego’s only Design Hotels property, the Granger occupies a rare position at the intersection of architectural heritage, contemporary creativity and civic life. Now, under the curatorial leadership of international art advisor Jennifer Findley, founder of the JFiN Collective and Oram’s newly appointed Director of Arts & Culture, the property is entering its next phase as a living cultural space.

Findley, whose practice spans private collections, museums and institutional partnerships, is spearheading a first-of-its-kind collaboration with UC San Diego’s renowned Stuart Collection. Rather than staging traditional hotel exhibitions, the partnership embeds artists in residence during the research and development phase of major public artworks, using the hotel as a generative base for experimentation, immersion and site-responsive creation. The inaugural artist, Los Angeles–based sculptor Max Hooper Schneider, will be followed by Mexico City–based collective RojoNegro and fashion designer Carla Fernández in 2026, extending Oram’s vision across borders, disciplines and communities.

This shift is unfolding in close collaboration with Kevin Mansour, co-founder and managing director of Oram Hotels, whose development and operational strategy positions cultural programming as a foundational element of a property’s identity. Together, Findley and Mansour are rethinking what hotels can be: active sites of cultural production rather than passive exhibition spaces. The two are exploring how embedding artists early reshapes both the economics and ethos of hospitality, how the return on cultural investment can be measured beyond aesthetics and why patience, authorship and site-specificity are becoming strategic advantages rather than luxuries. As the boundaries between art, design and experience continue to blur, Oram’s model points toward a future in which hospitality operates as a living system that creates meaning, memory and place.

Oram Hotels is positioning art not as décor but as a living component of the guest experience. What inspired you to take this approach, and how does it shift the economics or brand identity of a hospitality group?

Jennifer Findley and Kevin Mansour: We felt that hospitality was missing an opportunity to connect on a deeper level. We didn’t want the art to just hang there; we wanted it to invite guests to pause and ask questions. Guests visit us from all over the world—we aim to inspire them in a completely new way that engages the senses. Collaborating with internationally recognized but locally-based partners like art advisor Jennifer Findley and the JFiN Collective, as well as UC San Diego and the Stuart Collection, is integral to creating our authentically curated vision. 

From a brand perspective, this approach humanizes us. It shifts the focus from simple luxury to shared discovery. Economically, we find that when a guest connects emotionally with a space—when they feel they’ve learned something or seen something beautiful—they value the stay differently. It’s less about transaction and more about memory. We aren’t just selling a room; we’re offering a moment of reflection, and guests seem to really appreciate that.

Hotels have long integrated art collections, but your model embeds artists during the research and development phase of major works. What makes this residency model strategically different for both artists and hospitality partners?

JF and KM: By bringing the “arts in residence,” we’re building a fundamentally different model because it positions the hotel as an active part of the creative process—the hotels are not simply a place for display. Instead of producing pieces for the hotel, artists use the hotel as a home base and source of inspiration and a generative place for their work.

For many artists—especially those whose practices respond to landscape, light, environmental stimuli, social context or local ecology—immersion is essential.........

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