The Alfond Inn: A Teaching Collection in Winter Park

Whether you’re an art connoisseur or casual lover of any media work, you’ll enjoy a visit to The Alfond Inn at Rollins. The hotel, which is located in Winter Park, is one of the Top Hotels in the World from Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards 2017, and it is also home to a beautiful art collection that has begun a new rotation.

The environment of the hotel gives you a mix of antique and modern, coinciding with the art collection on display. The collection at The Alfond Inn at Rollins is not just for decoration. It is an extension of an art museum, making this hotel the only one in the United States with this feature. There are 350 pieces housed in their Cornell Fine Arts Museum provided by The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art.

The unveiling of its fall exhibition Time as a Landscape: Inquires of Art and Science will be in September. It will include artwork from Julie Mehretu, Richard Mosse, Tom LaDuke and Sara VanDerBeek. Tomás Saraceno’s commission will be installed in the dome of the conservatory at The Alfond Inn as part of the exhibition.

“The work on view at The Alfond Inn at Rollins inspires critical thinking about art created in the last 50 years,” says Amy Galpin, curator of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College (CFAM). The artwork in the museum has a “vanguard quality,” with pieces varying from a touch of social history to international affairs.

The hotel, which is owned by Rollins College, was given the artwork by alumni Barbara and Ted Alfond. It prides itself on the fact that the collection is a “teaching collection” because of the fact that the art focuses on artists that have already established themselves, as well as emerging artists.

If you visit or stay at the hotel, you will have the opportunity to take an In-House Art Tour of the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art every Sunday at 1 p.m. The tours are open and free to anyone – no reservation required. Another way to get a full experience of the hotel and art museum is through the “A Night at the Museum” package, which includes a two-night stay in the hotel, two art-inspired drinks and various chances to explore and learn more about the hotel, the museum and a couple of other small attractions relating to the hotel.

The Alfond Inn at Rollins provides great staycation opportunities to enjoy the hotel and everything artsy it has to offer.