Walk into most luxury lobbies and the art is the last thing that arrived. Something large, something inoffensive, something that matches the stone. In a Related building the art was specified alongside the lighting and the millwork, and in Playa del Carmen there is an entire garden built to hold sculpture. That ordering — art as part of the drawing rather than a finishing touch — is the whole difference.
Key Takeaways
- —Museum-quality artwork runs through the common areas of all three Mexican developments
- —The selection is made by Related's own art curator — a person on staff, not a supplier
- —The work is drawn from the Jorge M. Pérez Art Collection, the same collection behind Miami's art museum
- —Viceroy Playa del Carmen includes a sculpture garden among its outdoor spaces
- —It is installed before occupancy, which makes it part of the building rather than a decorating decision
Where you actually meet it
Not in a gallery you have to make time for. In the lobby you cross four times a day, the corridor between the lift and your door, the lounge where you wait for someone. Related's purchaser materials describe "museum-quality artwork throughout all common spaces" — and in Playa del Carmen the outdoor programme includes a sculpture garden, sitting alongside the infinity pool and the rooftop yoga deck as an amenity in its own right.
Curated, not sourced
The distinction is not a flourish. Sourcing art means giving a budget and a wall size to a supplier. Curating means a person with a point of view choosing pieces that speak to the building and to each other. Related's own language is precise about which of the two is happening: the work is "curated by Related art curator." Somebody stood in these rooms and decided.
The collection behind it
The Mexico City building names its source outright: the Jorge M. Pérez Art Collection. That is not a stock-image licence. It is the collection of a man whose name is on the front of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) — the city's museum of contemporary art, on Biscayne Bay — where the same holdings hang in public, for the price of a ticket.
He went further in 2019, repurposing a 28,000-square-foot warehouse in the working district of Allapattah as El Espacio 23, where the collection is shown free to the public. A buyer who cares about this can go and look — at PAMM on the bay, or in a converted warehouse in Allapattah — for the price of showing up. That verifiability is the difference between a collection and a claim.
What it does to a Tuesday
Amenity lists across the top of this market have converged almost completely — the pools, the gyms, the wine rooms and the screening rooms read the same in every brochure. A collection is the rare thing on that list that cannot be copied by the next tower, because the next tower would have to have spent forty years assembling one. What that is worth to you is a personal question, and it is best answered standing in the lobby rather than reading about it.