Luxury Cruise Ship Or Floating Art Museum? – Rlane Studios Gallery Site

You don’t need to be more than an occasional cruiser to have noticed a boom of late in fine art displays on luxury vessels. In addition to all the great design innovations to discover on Silversea’s new Silver Nova, one of the most exciting elements is the enormous and diverse multimedia contribution from fifty-nine world artists.

As lead curator who has worked on some twenty-five ships in the portfolio of Silversea’s Royal Caribbean parent, Chief Creative Officer Mariangela Capuzzo of the International Corporate Art group calls the collection “a museum-like opportunity of discovery.” Of the 1,766 works that her team brought together over a year’s time for the Nova, nearly all were commissioned and the majority made by women.

With artists coming from twenty-five countries, the collection also serves as an introduction to important photographers, painters and sculptors around the globe whom guests may not be familiar with. It’s a simple and gratifying experience just to wander the Nova, and with the prompt from brief descriptive wall plates to then search further online for background on the artists whose pieces most intrigue you.

Take the sort of vaguely Degas ballerina you see promptly upon embarking. Francesco Messina was an Italian sculptor whose long life and work stretched throughout most of the 20th century. Among his thirty-eight bronze sculptures onboard, that Scuola di Danza piece of a nearly five-foot-tall, heavily patinated ballerina with outstretched arms is a joy to see each time you pass by on daily shore excursions.

In assembling a collection of artworks that were created principally by methods of handcraft, Capuzzo describes her approach as providing the eye, i.e., you the viewing passenger, a connection with the processes behind textures and materiality. She has pointedly gathered works from artists whose choices of medium and colors represent their respective regions.

The fore and aft stairwells hold the heart of the collection, and their two dozen works are literally enough to make for their own gallery show. If you take your time, you’ll discover new details and aspects of individual pieces on each of your vertical comings and goings.

Works on the forward stairs that use metal, ceramic and wood in browns, rust, ocher and gold represent earth and fire, while those aft with a water and air theme employ glass and textiles, as well as often using natural materials such as shells and feathers.

Literally every stairwell piece merits close inspection for its meticulous handwork. Berlin-based Japanese artist Aiko Tezuka’s Lessons for Restoration (Perspective) 4 consists of a deconstructed woven fabric, the weft of which she unravels within a central oval portion so that vertical lines remain and produce what some might see as a pelting rain effect to the Florentine pastoral scene.

Quebec ceramist and artist, Marie-Andrée Côté’s two porcelain disks appear with a center hole in them like an old New York subway token. Just two-feet in diameter, Bleeding and Phantom Flower are described as inspired by seeds and algae and microscopic elements. With splashes of red in an all-white surface in one and within mixed black and white tones in the other, both disks are rich in texture. You should not, but you will be sorely tempted to touch them.

A portrait of a beautiful young woman gazing at you from behind a veil, the photo Yoruba Crown by French-Senegalese artist Delphine Diallo might remind you of some compositions by photojournalist Steve McCurry, who happens to be a Silversea ambassador and whose works is also represented in the Nova suite corridors, along with ancient maps.

In her Untitled piece, British artist Michelle McKinney uses copper and gold filaments on paper that form delicate birds that seem suspended in air. The abstract Borderline Perfect by Korean-American artist Timothy Hyunsoo Lee is made up of Korean calligraphy scrolls overlaid with silk and gold leaf under a polyurethane varnish. Argentine artist Kico Camacho’s abstract Untitled, Delta Series canvas is a richly textured, vibrantly colored acrylic sort of delta as if seen from a drone perspective.

For her Chrôma I, II, III pieces, artist Carmen Castañeda from Madrid embroidered countless little navy-blue chips onto silk that could look like a body of water or a map. Three delicate works by British artist Blott Kerr-Wilson are made from various kinds of small sea shells tightly packed onto small circular frames, all of which shimmer differently and produce markedly distinct visual effects.

Iranian-born, UK-resident Batool Showghi’s contribution is a series of many dozens of metal boxes the size of a deck of cards. Aptly called Captured in a Box, they are filled with colorful textile profiles of people that are partly painted and stitched, along with Farsi inscriptions. The artist uses birth certificate and passport photos, and each time you pass by you catch more detail and notice more characters, and you can’t help but wonder who they are, what their story and their fate is. Reminiscent of miniature paintings, the boxes might also remind you ever so slightly of Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits of the Roman period.

Speaking of Rome, take the Otium Spa where you can admire nearly a dozen ancient Roman-inspired artworks while you cool down and put yourself in a Pompeii frame of mind (minus the catastrophe) as you admire Marina Mankarios’s all-white, fragmented plaster sculptors.

So seamless do the works fit into the Nova’s design that it’s easy to forget that elements of nature pose enormous challenges in presentation for curation and installation teams on a ship. Outdoor art must withstand heavy wind and sea air. As quiet and stable as the Nova is, indoors poses challenges as well, with ceramic works held down by some sort of invisible adhesive.

How extensive is the collection? There are more than a thousand works in the suites and nearly twenty in the public restrooms alone. In some of the food venues, gorgeous ceramic plates represent various cultures. Suite corridors from deck 6 to deck 9 focus on distinct geographic regions.

The Dolce Vita Lounge has more vibrant and elegant Murano glass vases and artworks than you can shake a fist at…well, you wouldn’t want to do that. There are plenty of whimsical works in the Arts Café too, from Spanish artist Ana Rod’s ceramics adorned with colorful noodle shapes to authentic-looking ceramic vases that turn out to be made of rubber. And then, set within shelving that’s open on both sides, you might one time see a piece with Dalí’s visage, another time a fragment of Frida Kahlo and yet again a take-off of Klimt. You’re not crazy, but are in fact looking at double sided canvases whose frames swivel 360 degrees on a spindle.

Curating a ship the size of a small town is an ongoing job, of course. Next month, even more art is expected to be delivered and hung on the Nova. As if you ever needed an excuse to keep going back to a Silversea ship.