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Artist Bettina Grossman Had So Much Artwork, She Had No Room to Sleep
An artist named Bettina Grossman lived in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City from the 1960’s until her passing in 2021. She produced a massive amount of art, and kept most of it in her hotel room. There was so much artwork in her home that she had to sleep on a lawn chair in the middle of the hallway. In order to make space, Grossman hung a lot of her pieces up in the hallway of the hotel. However, in 2011, the hotel demanded that she take all of the paintings down, due to a renovation. In the last 30 years of her life, Bettina Grossman became a recluse, and rarely left her hotel room. Rent skyrocketed to a minimum of $4,000 a month in modern times, but Grossman was able to afford to continue living there because of New York City’s state rent regulations.
A Dutch filmmaker named Corinne van der Borch created a documentary called Girl With the Black Balloon about Bettina Grossman. There is also a second documentary about her called Bettina. Both of the movies show everyone how she used the hotel room as her home, studio, and storage space. During both films, the camera crew tried to help Bettina organize her work on shelves so that she would have more space. But that was quickly used up again once she made more work. In 2006, the Chelsea Hotel attempted to evict her, because of the state of her apartment. But they failed to do so in court, and she was allowed to stay there until her passing.