Along with the high room rate, there are certain characteristics to be found in luxury (increasingly called “boutique”) hotels these days: The mattresses are Tempur-Pedic; the thread counts of the sheets are 180 or higher; the shower has a deluxe nozzle, and the bathroom has a telephone; the televisions are 54-inch LCD flat panels; rooms are wired for high-speed Internet access; the contemporary artwork on the walls is original. Whoa, original art, and by contemporary artists? The new beds and sheets and TVs are in the way of the usual upgrade, a form of pampering, but the original art is the result of a rethinking of what the luxury experience entails: Wealthy people are accustomed to being around art. Chambers, the “Luxury Art Hotel” in Minneapolis (charging between $285 and $2,400 per night for a room), displays over 200 works of art (drawings, painting, photographs, prints and sculpture) by well-known (Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Subodh Gupta) and emerging artists in the lobby, corridors, bathrooms, restaurant and guest rooms; monitors in a number of those same areas screen video art on a round-the-clock basis. Sagamore, “The Art Hotel” in Miami Beach ($199-600 per night), specializes in video art from the collection of co-hotel owner Christine Taplin, with screens streaming work by artists in the lobby, restaurant and hallways; still images (photographs, oil and watercolor paintings, as well as sculpture) from the collection are found in the guest rooms and public areas. Like the Chambers, the Sonesta Hotel & Suites in Coconut Grove, Florida, whose per night room rates range from $189 to $599, similarly displays a mix of artwork by internationally-known (Jan Dibbets, Sam Francis, Sol Lewitt, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella), regionally renowned and emerging artists in its public spaces and guest rooms. At all three of these hotels, guests may take self-guided tours around the facilities to see some or all of the art on display, and brochures are available from the concierges that describe where and what the artwork is. – From Huff Post