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Art Hotel

Ana Goncalves
Feb 16, 2016
3 min read

The Marshal hotel is an abandoned build in the heart of downtown sacramento that is due to be torn down in the wake of the revitalization of the downtown area. But the building had one last hora thanks to the people at M5 Arts. A temporary art show was erected and opened to the public for only two short weeks.

I should say that things like this don’t happen in Sacramento. The only real exposure to the art this town offers is the Crocker Art Museum and a few small galleries. They feature artists that are well established but not widely known and their work tends to be very safe. While larger, more well known artists go to San Francisco, where there is not only an interest, but also a market. So that fact that something so experimental and unique was here generated a lot of interest from the community.

Free admission stickers were given out first come first serve starting at 11 am each day and many of the days sold out. The day I went the stickers were gone by 12:45 pm. There was a lot of controversy around this because so many didn’t get in. People on social media begged for them to stay open longer and some said that they would have been willing to pay admission to see the art hotel, $20 or even $40, but the creators declined, stating that they were anxious to get back to their families and their normal lives. But I think for these artists it really wasn’t about the money. They were interest in making a fleeting labor of love.

Though I was one of the lucky few to get in, I felt like I also wanted the artists to extend the exhibition for another week or two as well because the time constraint was a major hindrance toward to works inside the hotel. Let me explain. Each sticker had a time printed on it. Though I had gotten there around 12pm, I wasn’t able to get in until 5:30 that evening. Each group was allowed 20 minutes to explore the 3 storey building. As I walked through I could see that there really wasn’t enough time to take in everything. Each room was filled to the brim with art and I would have loved to interact and read the descriptions from the artists. There were even some rooms I didn’t get to see before they kicked all out.

Looking back now, I think that perhaps this was also the meaning behind the exhibit. Life is fleeting. There are so many beautiful things to see but only a limited amount of time you get on earth so you have to choose how you spend your time. I could have stopped at the first interesting thing I saw and explored it for the entire time, and not know what else was in the building. I also could have rushed through to see everything then came back and spent what little time I had left in the room I found the most interesting. But I choose to walk straight through and try to see as much as I could. And though I didn’t get to see everything, I feel like I got to experience a lot. And placing the exhibit inside a build that was due to be torn down seems even more appropriate.

The popularity of the show shows how hungry people are for this type art and hopefully some eyes were opened to new possibilities.