"When we bought the place, it was in disrepair, had holes all over, so we used art to cover them," said Connick, a self-described corporate dropout who bought the place with Heron in 1984. "For awhile we didn't have enough art to cover them all."
They do now - even though the holes have long been fixed. Art is at the core of the couple's cultural lives; Heron is a docent at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Fla., where they winter, and she sells real estate, and they are putting together a book called "The Nantucket School: Plein Air Paintings on the Island of Nantucket." There are hundreds of works of art of various sizes all over the exquisitely restored, three-story, 16-room inn. While the program benefits artists, guests enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Bill Duffy of Northbridge is an artist who's come here for 12 years. One of his pieces, a beautiful rendering of a beach house, hangs above the inn's vintage piano in the living room.
"I don't know of any other place on the Cape or the islands that does anything like this," Duffy said. "They give up valuable space in season for artists. It's amazing."
The inn undergoes regular renovation, Connick said, averaging a room and a half per year, at a cost of roughly $100,000 per room. This year, that included the Black Orchid where we stayed, a corner room with a small, private veranda overlooking the restored 18th-century Kite Hill Estate.
The room has a high trey ceiling with layered molding, a Swarovski crystal chandelier, original antique cast-iron fireplace, Victorian marble-top bureau, and wide pine floors. Decorated with pistachio and dark chocolate paint and wallpaper, highlighted with deep purple accents, the room also has Swarovski wall sconces. All rooms are unique, their names reflecting their character and design scheme, included the sanguine-toned Red Dahlia, with its unabashedly bright red antique dresser.
