While globally, Soho House recently completed a $2.7 billion deal to once again become a private company, domestically, the members’ club is focusing on refreshing its art. Since the brand began acquiring and curating art in 2009 at Soho House 76 Dean Street, its growing collection has become one of the biggest connection points with members, leading programming and driving interaction. Rooted in each House’s location and featuring both emerging and established artists from that city, the Soho House Art Collection has grown over 17 years to more than 11,000 works.
Soho House Chief Art Director Kate Bryan and artist JR at Soho Beach House
Courtesy of Soho House
“It will hit 15,000 artworks in the next five years,” says Kate Bryan, Soho House chief art director. Since she joined the company in 2016, Bryan has been focused on growth, taking the collection from 2,000 pieces to where it sits today. The acquisition strategy revolves around direct relationships with artists and galleries. Once their work is selected for a House, they are invited to become a member. Bryan does not purchase art at auction; every work is owned by Soho House and stays within the collection. Her team has created a proprietary database with geographic tags (birthplace, base, education) to catalog artists for specific House openings. Now, pieces are even being loaned to major museum shows, such as the Tate’s spring/summer exhibition on Hurvin Anderson. A coffee table book is also in the works.
“Galleries are very supportive of our collection, because it’s a public showcase for the artists. It’s not disappearing off into a home that no one ever sees again,” Bryan says. “Artists come in and see their work, see people interacting with it. We use our collection. We don’t put things in storage. If we acquire it, it’s for a place and it’s going up.”
Soho House West Hollywood and Soho Beach House in Miami, both opened in 2010, recently unveiled new art that has significantly shifted their aesthetics. L.A. artist Eric Uhlir created a monumental commission for the West Hollywood club, the largest in Soho House’s history at 65 feet long and 6.5 feet high, a four-panel site-specific painting wrapping around the grand entry staircase. Uhlir is known for blending pop culture references with his love of classical painting, abstracting history, nature and contemporary visual clues onto canvases of cinematic scale.
L.A. artist Eric Uhlir created Soho House’s largest ever-commission at Soho House West Hollywood.
Courtesy of Soho House
On the opposite coast, when Soho Beach House came up for an overall design refresh, the art team took the opportunity to ask: “What story do we want to tell now?” With a curatorial focus on photography, the Miami House’s original collection has been refreshed by an international roster of artists that reflects the city’s cutting-edge spirit and place in the art world as host to its flashiest yearly gathering, Art Basel. Blue-chip and internationally known artists such as Isaac Julien, JR, Laurie Simmons and Marilyn Minter collide with niche and emerging artists such as Sarah Maple, Cornelius Tulloch, Anna Carey and Marcus Maddox, working with polaroid, performance-based imagery, collage, cameraless photography, solarisation, digital manipulation, hand-printed works, lenticular, fabric and wood-based prints. All of these Soho Beach House artists are also represented across the 32 Soho Houses worldwide. “Try and think of another city that welcomes as many people for art in a gargantuan international moment. We thought we should reflect that spirit in this collection,” she says.
New photographs added to the Soho House Art Collection in Miami include work from Miguel Calderón, Walead Beshty and Marilyn Minter.
Courtesy of Soho House
While Miami’s art scene has catapulted into the pop culture stratosphere, Los Angeles has shifted from “secondary market” to global center of contemporary art, powered by film, photography, design and studio culture and arts fairs like Frieze L.A. (Feb. 26 to March 1 at Santa Monica Airport). Soho House has mirrored that rise with the art collections at its network of four L.A. properties. West Hollywood, co-curated by Kate Bryan and Anakena Paddon between 2023 and 2025, highlights artists born, based or trained in Los Angeles. The collection is anchored by blue-chip figures including Ed Ruscha, Judy Chicago and John Baldessari, alongside high-visibility contemporary names such as Walead Beshty, José Parlá and Hebru Brantley. The Luckman Club collection, installed in late 2024, features Los Angeles painters John Reagan, Erin Wright, Greg Ito, Pui Tiffany Chow and Emily Ferguson. “L.A. is now an important center for contemporary art with Frieze, major museums and so many artists having moved to town. The California art scene has always been staggeringly important, but it feels like the spotlight has come back onto it in a new way,” Bryan says. Soho House will host Frieze events at both its West Hollywood House and Holloway House throughout L.A. art week.
Bryan’s curatorial philosophy reveals how the collection comes to life. Her approach deliberately departs from the traditional gallery or museum model in favor of a more immersive, member-informed style.
Anna Carey’s work is represented in the Soho Beach House Art Collection.
Courtesy of Soho House
“I don’t have a white box. It’s a different way of curating but one of the benefits that I have is that I’m spending so much time with the members and I can sound them out on something a year before I do it,” she says. “When we build the permanent art collection, it becomes a jumping-off point for the House. We invite the artists to come and do talks and the artists are in the Houses, because they’re part of our membership.”
In turn, that member-first approach has helped shape a collection whose influence extends well beyond the Houses themselves.
“Some of the works that were acquired at the beginning are from artists who are impossible to get work from now,” she says. “There’s so much in the early collection that is still really powerful now, and all those artists have gone on to staggering fame but it is not as if we’ve sat around going to be a star in the future. We don’t worry so much about prices rising or longevity. We think about relevance to the here and now, and artists we believe in, want to support and have around. Then, as a happy byproduct, the collection starts to have a legacy and more cultural value.”
Marcus Maddox joins the Soho House Art Collection.
Courtesy of Soho House
Soho House is making other significant changes throughout its portfolio with new Houses planned in Palm Springs and Soho Ranch House Sonoma, as well as Soho Farmhouse in upstate New York and Soho Flatiron in New York City. In Europe, Milan, Madrid, Lisbon and Soho Farmhouse Tuscany will join the family. The group will open its 50th House — Soho House Tokyo in the Minami-Aoyama neighborhood — in April 2026. Soho Beach House is currently renovating its bedrooms and will debut a Soho Health Club, which will host the first international Wellness Summit across both Miami Houses. Miami Pool House adds four padel courts, a Health Club Café and an indoor-outdoor gym. Soho House West Hollywood features a new garden restaurant by Nancy Silverton. Persian restaurant Berenjak made its Los Angeles debut at Soho Warehouse. Soho House Holloway will add pickleball courts. When it opens, Soho House Los Cabos will feature club spaces, a Soho Health Club with a pool, Cecconi’s, a Sunset and Cabaret Bar and 15 bedrooms.
