Hunt Slonem - Personal Life

Personal Life

Hunt Slonem has never been married and has no children. Until 2010, he occupied a Tenth Street studio in Manhattan that was 40,000 square feet, divided into 89 rooms. In 2010, Slonem moved to a 15,000 square foot fourth floor former headquarters of the film company Moviola, on West 45th Street. The space served as his painting studio and was divided into a number of small rooms, all of which Slonem painted in old Louisiana plantation-house colors. The studio housed his ever-expanding quirky collections, from Neo-Gothic chairs to top hats, to marble busts of Marie Antoinette, to various objets d'art, mined from flea markets and antique fairs. In an interview in Vincent Katz’s book Pleasure Palaces: The Art & Homes of Hunt Slonem, he describes his collecting technique as “cluttering.” For him, objects are "friends;" the more there are, the more he is inspired. “I have to have a certain amount of stuff in place before I can function and paint,” he says. Although, Slonem still lives in the loft apartment he moved into in 1973, according to the Wall Street Journal, he does nearly all his entertaining at his new 25,000 square foot West 34th Street studio in the industrial Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan where he moved in 2011. He christened the third floor loft space with a birthday party attended by more than 200 people.

Hunt Slonem also owns two historically important Louisiana plantations—one called the Albania Plantation, on the Bayou Teche in St. Mary Parish, about two hours’ drive northwest of New Orleans, and the other – the Lakeside Plantation, in a remote location near the town of Batchelor, one hour north of Baton Rouge. According to the New York Times, the Batchelor property includes "an 1832 plantation house called Lakeside, pink if you please, as surprising in this community of shoebox houses as an aged diva in a pink organdy dress at McDonald’s. Also as indifferent, inasmuch as a house can be indifferent, to the bruising of time." It was once owned by Marquis de La Fayette whose close relationship with lifelong friends such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Monroe, John Adams, and Robert Livingston played a pivotal role in the Louisiana Purchase. In a show of gratitude, the United States gave La Fayette land which is known today as Lakeside Plantation. The property is listed in the National Register of Historic Places listings in Louisiana.