Last weekend, I kicked the mayor of New York out of bed. I’m not name-dropping (though Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire) and I’m not bragging (he’s getting to an age where his eye might linger over a Stannah stairlift ad) but I was making an exhibiton of myself - literally.

Mr Bloomberg had wanted to have the second sleepover at the city’s prestigious Guggenheim Museum (Oscar-nominated actress Chloe Sevigny having bagged the first) but The Sunday Times nabbed the booking so I got to spend the night in the Revolving Hotel Room, an installaton that currently graces the museum’s iconic rotunda.

By day, it’s on view to the paying public as part of the anyspacewhatever exhibition but, once the last visitors have been shepherded out at 5.45pm, two lucky paying guests can unpack their jimjams and experience the work as a fully functioning, unique hotel suite.

The piece was designed by Carsten Holler, a former scientist whose work challenges popular perceptions of a trip to the museum by encouraging audience participation. He was the artist who installed those enormous silver slides in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall a couple of years ago. In the Big Apple, he thinks even bigger, enlisting the grande dame of Park Avenue, the Waldorf=Astoria, to provide his mod pod with five-star frills.

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My Room is definitely minimalist - there aren’t even any walls. Instead, it spectacularly surveys not only the seventh and top ramp of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous architectural spiral but also the six floors that swirl below. Overhead, installed in the ceiling is Angela Bulloch’s Firmamental Night Sky: Oculus.12 so guests can snuggle into their comfy kingside bed with silky midnight blue sheets and over-sized feather pillows and fall to sleep counting its twinkling stars.

The furniture also follows a less-is-luxe principle: it’s stark and simple, with soft white wood and leather dressing, storage and working areas. There’s no ensuite (the shower is a lift-ride away in the director’s office, with a visitor restroom a short walk to the right). Which just leaves that word “Revolving” to consider. The Room is mounted on four glass discs that rotate - not the uncontrollable spinning experienced in cheap motel rooms across Tallin most weekend by stag parties but a barely discernible, harmonious shift every few seconds.

There are fluffy towels, luscious bathrobes, slippers and upmarket toiletries by Malin +Goetz and Guerlain. Okay, there is no flatscreen TV but two ramps down is the Cinema Liberte installation by Douglas Gordon and Rirkrit Tiravanija, a 24-hour screening of old movies that were at some time banned in the USA including classics such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Fortunately, Scarlet Street starring Edward G Robinson was playing during my stay.

There’s also free wifi and a complimentary minibar, stocked with Evian, lest alcohol bring out the inner Banksy - there are priceless Picassos downstairs. Strictly speaking, they’re out of bounds, though guests can enjoy an almost private view of theanyspacewhatever show. The “almost” is that your “concierge” must keep you within his sites while you wander. Mine was the affable Alex, a struggling young artist cum regular Guggenheim guide. He provided an enthusiastic running commentary as we descended the floors and it was almost two hours before we reached the lobby where we found Pinocchio face down in the fountain, the latest piece by Maurizio Cattelan whose controversial catalogue includes the pope being struck down by a meteorite.

It was giddying wonderful to be the gallery’s sole spectators: no foreign schoolkids making so much noise they destroyed the effect of the tropical sound installation by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster; no pretentious snobs, thrilled by the sound of their own voices, extolling on Douglas Gordon’s subversive texts, which are dotted throughout the building; no backs of heads blocking your view of Jorge Pardo’s intricately patterned cardboard screens. Nothing to detract from the shere pleasure of the art.

Afterwards, Alex retired to a chair two floors below and directly opposite my “Room”. If I needed anything, I could walk to the rail and attract his attention. We debated how many lights to turn off and decided on about half. It was certainly strange to slip under the duvet and become part of the artwork but not scarey. As my bed quietly carouselled and I gazed at the LED constellation above and the elegantly soothing curves of this architectural gem around me, I felt enveloped in an extraordinary artistic stillness that was magical.

I slept remarkably well until a torch-wielding head of night security delivered my wake-up call right on time. I nibbled on my breakfast of pastries and Perrier and was soon stepping into my prebooked taxi.

My driver looked confused. “I thought you were staying in a hotel.”

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