Welcome to 21c Museum Hotel Kansas City! Thank you for choosing 21c as your home away from home. A few important notes:

Dining at 21c

The restored and reimagined Savoy restaurant highlights the building’s historical elements while bringing new life and energy to the space known for its famous patrons, including Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and John D. Rockefeller. Adjacent museum galleries exhibiting contemporary art inspire exploration over cocktails or following a meal.

• Dinner service is available Tuesday – Sunday from 5pm – 10pm.
• Self-serve breakfast buffet is available everyday from 7:30am – 10:30am. See the Front Desk for pricing.  Please note: The Savoy is currently not offering in-room dining options for breakfast.
• View menus here.
• Make a reservation here.

Amenities

More than simply a place to spend the night, 21c is an authentic experience. If there is anything you need during your stay, please don’t hesitate to dial “0” or stop by the Front Desk. Our team is always ready to help and eager to make your visit as memorable and unique as 21c itself.

• Our Fitness Center is open 24 hours a day on the second floor and is accessible by guest key.
• If you have any Business Needs including copying or printing, please see the Front Desk.
• Your room is equipped with secure, Complimentary Wi-Fi. Consult your keycard sleeve or the Front Desk team for login information.
• There are several Self-Parking options in close proximity to the hotel. Please see the Front Desk for locations. Unfortunately, we are not offering valet parking at this time.
• For your convenience, Housekeeping Services are provided daily and by request. Should you have any specific requests or needs, please contact the Front Desk team.
• Same-day Dry Cleaning is available during your stay. Laundry bags and tickets are available at the Front Desk.
• An In-Room Safe is available for the security of any valuables. Please contact the Font Desk team if you need safe operation assistance.
• Mini Fridges are available upon request. Please call the Front Desk.  We have a limited supply available and they are on a first come, first served basis. We are not currently offering mini bar services.
• If you would like any additional items brought to your room such as bath robes, ice, coffee pods please call the Front Desk.
• We believe in the power of contemporary art to spark conversation, create connections, and guide us through even the most challenging times. Our museum is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Join us for a free guided tour every Friday at 5pm in the lobby.
• A world of art is also available for viewing through your in-room television set! The 21c Art Channel is dedicated to showcasing a rotating collection from 21c’s library of original works by contemporary artists, selected in relation to the current roster of exhibitions at all 21c locations.

Need to make a call? Use your In-Room Phone for:

Voicemail: Press the Voicemail button or dial 4200

Room to Room calls: Dial 7 + Room Number

Local calls: Dial 9 + Number

Toll Free calls: Dial 9 + 1 + Number

Emergency calls: Dial 9 +911

Wake Up calls: Press the Wake Up button and follow prompts
to set your preferred time

Usage fees will apply for:

Long-distance calls: Dial 9 + 1 + Area Code + Number

International calls: Dial 9 + 011 + Country Code + City Code + Number

21c Safety

Smoking:
To improve indoor air quality and for the health and safety of our guests and team, 21c IS A SMOKE-FREE HOTEL. Guests wishing to smoke can do so outside of the building. A fee of $250 will be assessed to any room in which signs or smells of smoking are found.

Safety & Security:

• Please refer to the map on the back of your room door to familiarize yourself
  with the nearest emergency exit.
• For the health and safety of all our guests and teammates, please regard all alarms as “the real thing.” Please stay calm and cooperate with our team while we work to ensure your safety.
• During alarms, please do not attempt to use the elevator. Make your way to the nearest stairwell and exit the building.

In case of fire:

• If a fire breaks out in your room, immediately exit your room and close the door behind you to keep the hall clear of smoke and fire. Activate the nearest alarm pull station. Report the situation to the Front Desk team immediately.
• If a fire breaks out in another part of the building, you may be roused by the fire alarm signal, voice announcements over the PA system, shouting in the corridor, a phone call, or by the sound of sirens outside. Stay calm. Check your door for heat before opening.
• If hot, remain in the room and seal the door with wet towels and vent other openings. Alert the Front Desk immediately.
• If cool, exit the room immediately. Do not attempt to use the elevator. Please use the nearest stairwell to exit and wait for further instruction before returning to your room.

In case of severe weather:

The Front Desk team will keep up-to-date information on local conditions. Should evacuation of rooms become necessary, the front desk team will provide you with instructions on how to proceed.

Important phone numbers:

Front Desk………………………………………………………………Dial 0

Fire, Police, EMS……………………………………………………..Dial 9 + 911

Suicide Crisis Lifeline ………………………………………………Dial 9 + 1.800.273.8255

National Drug & Poison Center…………………………………Dial 9 + 1.800.222.1222

Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City………………………….Dial 9 + 932.2000

Children’s Mercy Adele Hall Campus………………………..Dial 9 + 234.3000

North Kansas City Hospital………………………………………Dial 9 + 691.2000

Explore 21c

21c is a multi-venue contemporary art museum located in ten cities across the U.S. One of the largest contemporary art museums in the country and North America’s only collecting museum dedicated solely to the art of the 21st century, each property features exhibition space open free of charge, combined with a boutique hotel and chef-driven restaurant.

21c presents a range of arts programming curated by Museum Director, Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, including both solo and group exhibitions that reflect the global nature of art today, as well as site-specific, commissioned installations, and a variety of cultural events. 21c collaborates on arts initiatives across the country, including with the North Carolina Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Barnes Foundation, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Creative Capital Foundation, Creative Time, and others.

At 21c, art is integral to who we are and integrated throughout our spaces, providing opportunities for discovery and starting points for new connections and lively conversations. 21c creates innovative cultural centers for viewing thought-provoking contemporary art from all over the world. Exhibitions are installed in dedicated, publicly accessible galleries and artworks, and site-specific commissions appear in elevators, public restrooms, courtyards, hallways, guest rooms, at the reception desk, in The Savoy’s dining room and bar, and beyond, engaging guests and passersby alike. 21c believes art can and should be part of daily life for everyone.

Cracking Art (Italian), Sky Blue Penguin, 2018

Any visitor to 21c Kansas City will encounter a member of the flock of Sky Blue Penguins, created exclusively for 21c Museum Hotel Kansas City by Cracking Art.

The artists of Cracking Art have created a penguin for 21c Kansas City that celebrates the physical beauty of the expansive landscape of the Midwest, as well as the dreams and desires that inspire fantasy, travel, and innovation: The Sky Blue Penguin. Defined as the color of the sky at high noon, this hue is significant to both science and art as writer Rebecca Solnit explains in A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

“Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water, the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason….This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.”

At 21c Kansas City, the sky blue flock greets visitors throughout the building, bringing both the natural world and the realm of the imagination into the 135-year old Savoy, now transformed into a contemporary, community cultural center, boutique hotel, and chef-driven restaurant.

Cracking Art was founded in 1993 by seven artists: Alex Angi, Kicco, Renzo Nucara, Carlo Rizzeti, Omar Ronda, Marco Veronese, and William Sweetlove. They have exhibited widely throughout Europe and first exhibited at 21c in 2005. The Red Penguin sculptures that are exhibited throughout 21c Museum Hotel Louisville were commissioned for a public art project at the 2005 Venice Biennale. The mission of Cracking Art is to raise awareness of environmental issues and the use and misuse of natural resources by creating artworks with materials derived from petroleum products. The name Cracking Art refers to the chemical reaction that occurs when converting raw crude oil into plastic or the moment when natural becomes artificial.

Site-Specific Art at 21c Kansas City 

Ken + Julia Yonetani (Japanese, Australian), U.S.A.: Crystal Palace: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nuclear Nations, 2013-15

This is the largest work in the artists’ series of chandelier sculptures, introduced at the 2013 Singapore Biennial. Entitled Crystal Palace: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nuclear Nations, the installation was comprised of 31 uranium glass chandeliers. Utilizing the rarely employed material of uranium glass, the size of the chandelier corresponds to the scale of each country’s nuclear power capacity. Now glowing beneath the historic dome in the lobby of 21c Kansas City, this work references nature, artifice, technology, and various manifestations of power, expressing the artists’ interrogation, “In the future, what should we wish for?”

Brad Kahlhamer, Super Catcher, Vast Array, 2017 

Super Catcher, Vast Array is a hanging sculptural installation that takes the form of multiple Native American dream catchers, made of wire and bells. Associated with both Ojibwe and Lakota traditions, dreamcatchers were used as talismans to protect sleeping people, usually children, from bad dreams and nightmares. Native Americans believe that the night air is filled with dreams — hung above the bed in a place where the morning sunlight can hit it, the dream catcher draws all sorts of dreams and thoughts into its webs. Good dreams pass through and gently slide down the feathers to comfort the sleeper below, while bad dreams are caught up in its protective net and destroyed, burned up in the light of day. The beads used in dream catchers are thought to symbolize either or both the spider (the web weaver itself), or the good dreams that could not pass through the web, immortalized in the form of sacred charms. Originally small in size and made with natural materials such as feathers and beads, many dreamcatchers for sale today are often oversized and made of cheap plastic materials. Many Native American cultures still consider the dreamcatcher to be a symbol of unity and identification, while others have come to see dreamcatchers as a symbol of cultural appropriation.

Working at a large-scale to create intricate, wire, and bell sculptures that shimmer and cast shadows as the light pass over and through space, Kahlhamer subverts commercial association. Rather, his work affirms the magical, mythical spirit of the dreamcatcher, expanding its power. Super Catcher, Vast Array is a superhero—delicate yet strong, heavy with history yet light with new hopes and dreams.

This work highlights the role of the artist as healer or shaman, bringing a sense of balance, compassion, and inclusivity to space originally designed to celebrate the European-American expansion and the mythology of manifest destiny, as illustrated in the historic murals in the Savoy dining room. As the artist explained, the installation of his Super Catcher, Vast Array, will “create a visual ‘football game’ with a more level playing field, invoking a multiplicity of histories, visions, and voices.” The presence of Kahlhamer’s work transforms a space of the past into a forward-focused one of the present, acknowledging the complexity of history and the potential for progress, a reminder of the advances made since the restaurant’s first incarnation — visual confirmation that art is the highest form of hope.

Luftwerk (German, American), Linear Sky, 2018

Responding to the form and function of the entrance hallway at 21c Kansas City, Luftwerk’s Linear Sky features light fixtures that vary in length, producing an anamorphic optical illusion of an expanding, outward pattern of line and color upon both entering and exiting the ramp. The hues from one direction differ from those in the opposite, acting like a multi-colored mirror of each other and differentiating the experience of moving into or out of the hallway. The LEDs are programmed with a lighting sequence inspired by the changing hues of the outdoor skies above the urban landscape of Kansas City: the palette of bright morning saturates the walls that greet visitors, while the glow of waning daylight colors envelops those en route to the outdoors. “The workflow of Linear Sky starts with an image,” say the artists; the images are sliced vertically, then uploaded into a software program, or script, that produces the generative sequencing of images. “The basic function that this script hinges around tells an individual light to move to a specific color over a specific amount of time,” they explain. “Each light is given its own zone in the image, every time the script is run, it selects a random row and column to sample, grabs the RGB values, and sends them to the lights. The timing has a degree of variation as well. The tallest lights have smaller upper and lower bounds, and the upper and lower bounds of the timing variation increase as the lights get smaller. This creates faster movement in the center of the piece and slower movement at the edges. This script is run once every 10 seconds, the array that is sampled changes every hour. At each iteration of the script, every bar has 200 colors to sample from. With 48 bars in the installation, and 24 array combinations to select from, the odds of the installation is in the exact same state twice is astronomically improbable.”

Evoking the span from dawn to dusk and back again, Linear Sky juxtaposes day and night, nature and technology, past and present, welcoming visitors into a space of the future. The vertical light fixtures installed on monochromatic walls reference the aesthetics of Minimalism and create a strong, contemporary contrast to the historic patterning on the floor and the ornate pilasters on the walls. The geometric interplay of the vertical and the horizontal within this narrow ramp leading to and from the lobby both highlights and transforms the architecture, offering visitors views of a new horizon from either direction.

Elevate at 21c

Elevate at 21c presents rotating exhibitions of works by artists living and working in Kansas City. Elevate provides hotel guests with unique access to the work of notable regional artists while featuring their work in the context of 21c’s contemporary art space. Follow this link to learn more about the artists.

Art Channel 

21c Kansas City is proud to showcase a film and video artwork channel available in the guest rooms and the lounge at The Savoy. The channel showcases a rotating selection from the 21c Collection of over 60 original films, and video works by artists from around the world, including Yinka Shonibare MBE, Anthony Goicolea, Hiraki Sawa, Mark Bradford, Hans Op de Beeck, Nina Katchadourian, and others. Interviews and short-form documentaries on 21c artists are also featured on the Art Channel. Content changes regularly, with new selections from our collection, are being screened periodically, so stay tuned.

In-Room Art

The guest rooms at 21c Kansas City feature photographic collages by 21c founder Laura Lee Brown from her journeys all over the world, capturing the spirit and the sensibility of the places and people she encounters. “There are so many other ways to live, and I am curious to see, to learn, to understand,” says Brown.

Events

Hosting an event or meeting? Let us wow your guests. With over 8,000 square feet of Event Space, 21c can accommodate parties that range from intimate gatherings of 10 to rocking receptions for 140 guests. Contact the Events Team at extensions “4212” to learn more.