SAN DIEGO – Oram Hotels, the San Diego hospitality collective behind two of San Diego’s most historic hotels—Granger Hotel and The Guild—has appointed Jennifer Findley as its first Director of Arts & Culture. An internationally regarded art advisor and founder of La Jolla–based JFiN Collective, Findley and Oram Hotels co-founder, Kevin Mansour, are the driving forces behind this collaboration. The two are bringing together cross-border voices and rising artists, giving them space to create and showcase work inspired by the hotels and San Diego community. Together, Granger Hotel and The Guild will serve as a center-points of exchange, focusing on art and artists from the region and beyond.
Granger Hotel and The Guild will transform into independent cultural hubs within downtown San Diego, reframing how art is experienced in hospitality. The hotels will host artist residencies, institutional collaborations, and community programming that reflect the region’s cross-border creativity and amplify San Diego’s role as a designated World Design Capital.
As part of its new arts platform, Oram Hotels is partnering with UC San Diego’s Chief Campus Curator’s Office to host visiting Stuart Collection artists during periods of research and development—offering a city base that naturally connects artists with San Diego. The partnership begins in November at Granger Hotel with Los Angeles–based sculptor Max Hooper Schneider, presented in connection with the Emerging Artists Program within the Stuart Collection. Over the course of a year, Hooper Schneider’s residency advances a project to be realized on campus.
We’re thrilled to welcome visiting Stuart Collection artists to Oram Hotels during such a vital phase of their process. Having a supportive home base in San Diego and a connection to the vital community that Oram Hotels is fostering enriches the development of works that are ultimately experienced across the UC San Diego enterprise. Jess Berlanga Taylor, UC San Diego’s Chief Campus Curator
Following Schneider, Granger Hotel will welcome two more Stuart Collection artists in 2026, including Mexico City-based collective RojoNegro and fashion designer Carla Fernández, with future programs planned at The Guild.
Our dedication to art reflects a broader commitment to fostering community engagement through culture, creativity, and accessibility. Our properties feature numerous original works from local artists, but Jennifer’s appointment and her connection with UC San Diego’s Stuart Collection take this commitment to a new level. Together, we are creating living cultural spaces where art and hospitality intersect. Kevin Mansour, co-founder of Oram Hotels
Granger Hotel and The Guild, both meticulously restored by the Mansour family, are among San Diego’s most architecturally significant hotels. Granger Hotel, a Romanesque 1904 landmark and member of Marriott Bonvoy’s Design Hotels, is celebrated for its layered interiors and intimate scale, while The Guild, a reimagined Armed Services YMCA, balances historic architecture with contemporary design. Now, under Findley’s vision, both properties will extend their cultural role beyond hospitality, offering immersive encounters with art in unexpected settings.
With a shared commitment to inclusivity, innovation, and cultural exchange, Oram Hotels, JFiN Collective, and UC San Diego’s Stuart Collection are reshaping downtown San Diego into a hub where creativity, design, and community converge, while ensuring long-term access to UC San Diego’s nationally recognized art programs.
About The Stuart Collection at UC San Diego
The Stuart Collection at UC San Diego, comprising 22 permanent artworks by world-renowned artists, aims to question conventional understandings of public art in playful and insightful ways through its commissioning programs. The Stuart Collection seeks to enrich the cultural, intellectual, and scholarly life of the UC San Diego campus and local San Diego community. We enhance public life through art that encourages thoughtful deliberation, an awareness of difference, mental and physical wellbeing, and that inspires creative solutions to complex issues; and continue to commission exciting new works from the world’s most important contemporary artists through our Landmarks, Emerging Artists and Public Programs.
About JFiN Collective
Jennifer Findley is an art advisor, curator, and founder of the JFiN Collective. Findley specializes in the strategic development of legacy art collections that are grounded in narrative and honed aesthetics. Known for her sharp curatorial eye and deep market insight, Findley works internationally with private, institutional and commercial collectors to curate focused holdings in Contemporary and Ultra-Contemporary art. Through the JFiN Collective, Findley provides full-spectrum advisory services—from acquisition strategy and collection management to exhibition planning and curatorial consulting. She most recently co-curated ‘american minimal’, an acclaimed survey of East and West Coast Minimalism with a focus on underrepresented women artists, at the San Diego Museum of Art. Findley is an art advocate and serves on the Boards and Collection Committees of the Mingei International Museum and the San Diego Museum of Art. Named an Art Expert by the Observer, Findley is regularly invited to speak on curated collecting and serve as a judge for international art competitions, and has been recognized as a “curator to know” and a “power player” in the Southern California art scene.
About Oram Hotels
Oram Hotels is a San Diego-based hospitality collective behind some of San Diego’s most historic buildings. Founded by brothers Kevin and Alvin Mansour, Oram Hotels is known for its transformation of historic buildings into vibrant, community-focused spaces. The brothers own and operate two hotels in San Diego and one in Oceanside. Inspired by their travels, the brothers create spaces rooted in community and designed for cultural engagement and inspiration. Their flagship property, a historic Army-Navy YMCA Building, opened as The Guild in June of 2019. Granger Hotel, their most recent venture which opened in November 2024, is housed in a 1902 Romanesque-style building and is San Diego’s first guest-only hotel and proud member of Design Hotels. With a commitment to design and a passion for hosting, Oram Hotels leverages its properties as platforms for cultural engagement and inspiration.
