Serena Williams showed off cotton art piece in home before hotel outrage

Serena Williams proudly showed off a cotton art piece in her Florida home before calling out a New York City hotel for displaying a cotton plant decoration.

In their mansion located north of Miami, Williams and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, have a sculpture by Radcliffe Bailey titled “Monument for a Promise,” which the late artist created in 2013.

The steel and concrete structure depicts a donkey carrying a trunk and standing over a mound of cotton, per ARTnews.

The outlet noted that Bailey “assembled an influential body of work” using “objects he collected within a continuum of Black history” throughout his career.

“Tintypes from his family’s archive, Georgian red clay, shipping tarp and African figurines were among the many elements that appeared in his art, which primarily took the form of sculptural installations, some of which were monumental in scale,” ARTnews reported when Bailey died in November 2023.

Williams, 44, spoke about displaying the “Monument for a Promise” sculpture in her foyer and formal sitting room, which she transformed into a colorful art space featuring eccentric pieces, in a February 2021 profile for Architectural Digest.

“When you walk in, it’s like walking into an art gallery,” the retired tennis superstar gushed at the time. “That’s my favorite part of the house. It’s so unique. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Ohanian — with whom Williams shares daughters Olympia, 8, and Adira, 2 — has even posted about the “Monument for a Promise” on Instagram.

In October 2020, the Reddit co-founder, 42, uploaded a photo of Olympia looking up at the sculpture.

Almost five years later, Williams took to her Instagram Story to film herself in the hallway of an unidentified Manhattan hotel where a cotton plant sat atop an entryway table.

“How do we feel about cotton as decoration?” she asked her followers, panning to the arrangement. “Personally, for me, it doesn’t feel great.”

Plucking a cotton ball off a branch, the former athlete noted that “it feels like nail polish remover cotton.”