Art: Curious curator

For all she knows, Jennifer Phelps may be the only hotel art curator in the country. And she's been making it up since she signed on in April 2006 at the Chambers, the luxury art hotel at 901 Hennepin Av. in downtown Minneapolis.

Hotel owner Ralph Burnet buys the art, frets over where to put it and orders crews of art handlers to do the installations. Then Phelps steps in to manage the day-to-day operation, including keeping the Art-o-mat stocked.

The Art-o-mat is a former cigarette vending machine, customized by North Carolina artist Clark Wittington, that stands near the hotel's check-in desk. For $5, guests can buy tokens for the machine, which dispenses art in little boxes the size of cigarette packs.

Offerings change frequently, but on a recent afternoon, the art miniatures included hand-made earrings, bottle-cap jewelry, bar-code tattoos, itty-bitty photos, abstract paintings, tiny collages and something called "Roasted Roaches." On a highbrow note, an artist named Sean Nowicki was offering "process paintings based on Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet.'"I love this idea," Phelps said. "Not only is it great to get a piece of art for $5, but it's original stuff. One woman knits little finger puppets. There's a guy from Brooklyn who makes pewter wishbones and fortune cookies. We sell on average about 100 packs every three weeks, so I'm always having to order more."

Ever-changing art

Burnet began picking art for the hotel two or three years before it opened, Phelps explained recently over tea in the hotel's chic but cozy white lobby.

Several of Burnet's choices ornament the space, including Evan Penny's startlingly realistic bust of an elderly man, a sparkling cascade of silvery kitchen tongs by Suboda Gupta, a colorful abstract canvas by Gary Hume and Damien Hirst's infamous pickled bull's head beside the front desk.

"My first job was to catalog everything and use the floor plans to place it in the rooms," Phelps said. "That was fun, like a puzzle, because there are 60 rooms, and each got two or three pieces, depending on whether it was a suite or a single. "

One recent addition is a bronze sculpture by British artist Gavin Turk. It sits in a hallway near the hotel's banquet rooms and looks like a pile of black plastic garbage bags stuffed to overflowing with trash. It's Phelps' job to tamp down the ire of outraged hotel guests who stumble upon it en route to a soiree.

"They call up, furious, because they're having a party and what are we doing with garbage bags dumped in the hallway?" she said. "When I tell them it's art, they burst out laughing."

Even though Phelps previously worked at Walker Art Center, where art tours were routine, she never imagined that anyone might want to tour the hotel's art collection. To her surprise, tours are a big part of the job, so much so that she's enlisted four other staff members to help -- including an accountant, a kitchen staffer and a night security guard.

Tour takers come from all over. There have been groups affiliated with museums in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Santa Fe, N.M.; Philadelphia; New York; Boston, and Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard's Fogg Museum of Art. Some stay at the hotel; others drop by. Occasionally, she has even given tours to hotel dinner guests, but only by advance request. Phelps has twin sons, 12, whose needs compete for her attention.

Born in Wayzata, Phelps graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles with a degree in English. Before returning to the Twin Cities in the mid-1990s, she worked for about 15 years in galleries and for private art dealers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. That experience gained her entree to the Walker, from which she was hired by Burnet, a longtime Walker board member.

Besides clucking over the hotel's art, Phelps also programs its gallery, where shows change about four times a year, and keeps its tiny gift shop stocked with amusing temptations. There, visitors can pick up a book-sized abstract painting by Twin Cities artist Lindsay Halleckson for $40, a limited-edition $250 shopping bag made from Jockey shorts by the Canadian collective General Idea, a bronze muffin by Jude Tallichet for $800, or a pewter saltine cracker by Herbert Hoover for $10.

"People should know that you don't have to stay here to come in and see the art," Phelps said.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431

Mary Abbe • mabbe@startribune.com