On the sundeck, motion was the subject rather than the setting. “States of Motion,” the inaugural exhibition staged aboard the Floating Art Hotel, took movement not as image but as condition, and let the idea play out across 350 square metres recast as a sculptural garden works by Tomás Saraceno, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Shirin Neshat, and Bernard Venet held in continuous dialogue with the water, the light, and one another. Below the rail, the Monte-Carlo Casino. Beyond it, the Mediterranean. The premise was that art encountered at this register, at sea, is encountered differently and for four days in June, June 4 to 8, with the Monaco Grand Prix as its backdrop, the project gave the premise a hull to prove it.
Courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
It is, by design, a world-first: a private superyacht reimagined as a temporary, museum-level exhibition. What makes it worth a collector’s attention is less the spectacle than the structure.
A Members’ Club That Moves
Founder Gaelle Jaunay Calendini by artist Hervé Lassince, courtesy of The
Floating Art Hotel.
The Floating Art Hotel does not want to be a fair, and it has written that refusal into its architecture. With only fourteen private suites and a guest list kept deliberately short, the edition was built for depth rather than footfall collectors, founders, and cultural figures in a single hull, with everything included from the moment they board: hospitality, a wellness programme, Formula 1 access, and a full contemporary art programme unfolding across the vessel through the weekend. Monaco is the first port of an ongoing series; Miami, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi are to follow, each promised an entirely new curatorial vision shaped by its destination. An activation is an evening. An itinerary is an argument.
The concept, cultural vision, and overall strategy behind The Floating Art Hotel belong to Gaëlle Jaunay Calendini, founder of the Los Angeles– and Paris–based production house A Love Story Agency, who arrived at it from the world of brand campaigns and wanted to redirect that level of craft toward “something that actually brings people together.” The project is framed not as a hospitality experience but as a cultural platform, a concept engineered so that exchange between artists, collectors, and cultural actors might happen on itw own, and outlast the race that occasioned it.
The inaugural exhibition, “States of Motion,” is curated by Francesco Marchiaro of Marchiaro Consulting, who developed the curatorial framework for the Monaco edition.
Art consultant Vanessa Fuchs was invited to participate in the terrace’s sculptural garden curation.
States of Motion
Artwork by Kym Ellery, courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
Artwork by Marina Abramovic, courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
The works were chosen to argue with their surroundings rather than ignore them. “States of Motion” spans sculpture, installation, photography, digital work, and live performance from more than thirty international artists, and treats the deck itself exposed to wind, glare, and the constant motion of the bay as a participant rather than a backdrop. Among the names: Marina Abramović, Tomás Saraceno, Shirin Neshat, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Bernard Venet, Julian Charrière, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jaime Hayón, Jeppe Hein, Nika Neelova, Keita Miyazaki, the poet-artist Ana Maria Caballero, Agoria, Ahmet Güneştekin, Jorge Parra, Natalie Brehmer, and Ryan Koopmans, among others. It is a roster that would hold its own indoors; the wager is that it gains something out of doors, on water, with nowhere for a work to hide.
Bureau of Innovation, on the Deck
Micheluzzi Glass designs, courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
Among the partners behind the Monaco edition, Bureau of Innovation arrived with the clearest material agenda. The Paris-based curatorial platform founded by Holly Lucas, formerly of Melbourne’s celebrated Lucas Restaurants group, and co-led with Sam Henley of the London stone studio Agglomerati—presented a selection of collectible design across the sculptural sundeck, work it believes represents the most compelling material practices now operating. BOI’s case is that the most interesting designers “operate between” art, architecture, furniture, and object, as Lucas has put it, and that few platforms present that fluidity with intention. Henley supplies the discipline: stone, he has noted, “doesn’t tolerate superficial gestures” a useful corrective on a deck where the Riviera’s appetite for excess is never far off.
BOI shared the edition’s support with a roster of houses and makers, SoHo House, Komos Tequila, Prunier Caviar, You&Me Vodka, VIBI Venezia, Armand Philippe Champagne, French Bloom, François Daubinet and Orun among them and anchored its own programming to purpose.
BOI returned to the Monaco F1 for the 3rd consecutive year with this time with two yacht programs.
Annabelle Traves, courtesy of You’re Linked.
Audrey Freeman, courtesy of You’re Linked.
The BOI weekend experience opened with a black-tie gala in support of Pink Ribbon Monaco, the Principality’s leading breast cancer foundation under the honorary presidency of H.S.H. Princess Charlène, on board Alfa Nero in partnership with You’re Linked and Forbes Club Australia. Featuring a ballet solo from Audrey Freeman the Pink Ribbon charity commitment Lucas has carried through several years on the foundation’s gala committee. The most formal evening of the weekend was also its least transactional.
The View from the Water
Juliette Jouannais, Lamp by Agglomareti x Tom FEREDAY,
courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
The access was engineered as carefully as the art. Every guest received a place on the Floating Art Hotel’s private terrace atop Les Caravelles, with direct sightlines onto Sainte Dévote the tight right-hander where the circuit announces itself while guests in the Owner’s Residence were given Paddock Club and pit-lane access across Saturday and Sunday. Private tenders ran between the yacht and the city day and night, the better to move guests without ever touching the crush ashore. The point was not proximity to the race so much as exemption from everything around it.
The vessel itself the organizers leave discreetly unnamed, in keeping with the project’s register. BOI’s second program yacht is more forthcoming: the Monaco edition was staged aboard the 82-metre Alfa Nero, an Oceanco of some pedigree returned to the water after a recent refit. There is a quiet aptness in a hull defined by years out of service being recommissioned, however briefly, as a place where art is meant to be looked at. The yacht as trophy is a familiar Monaco grammar; the yacht as museum is a more interesting sentence and the first, the Floating Art Hotel insists, of several to come.
Art curator Francesco Marchiaro and Founder Gaelle Jaunay Calendini, courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
BOI founders Sam Henley & Holly Lucas, courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
Courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
Artwork by Jaime Hayon, courtesy of The Floating Art Hotel.
