EXCHANGE PROGRAM

Where: Henry Jones Art Hotel, Hobart, Tasmania

The draw: A de facto gallery for an often-overlooked art school

The scene: Country-craving weekenders from Sydney and adventurous overseas travelers

Picture this: It's rare to think of Australia as a hotbed of culture—and even rarer to call out ultraconservative Tasmania for its arts scene. Yet the almost three-year-old Henry Jones Art Hotel is a bone fide find. It has a strong connection to the prestigious Tasmanian School of Art, located next door, one of the better design colleges in the country. Housed in an old jam factory on the waterfront (and named after the jam company's founder), the hotel's common areas are crammed with hundreds of local artworks, ranging from traditional oil landscapes to digital photography and even mod furniture—and most of it is for sale. Each of the rooms has an art guide for the guests, and there's a gratis tour of the collection highlights every Friday. The raw-beam roof is the sole clue to the hotel's former function; the minimalist white-walled rooms and common areas are clean-lined and gallerylike. There's art in every room, of course, as well as handmade timber furniture and ultramodern glassed-in bathrooms with tubs. Don't you wish your school had been so happening?

Henry Jones Art Hotel
Tel: 61 3 6210 7700
Doubles from $210