Regeneration in Private Hands: Corporate Collections
Thousands of artworks in office spaces, financial support for emerging artists, a showcase for new voices from diverse regions worldwide, and a staggering market valued at millions of pounds. These are some of the key aspects of international corporate collections. In the last decade, these collections have gained enough momentum to dominate the art world from different angles due to their increased interest in contemporary ideas as a means to regenerate collections and the ethos of these companies. The current state of corporate collections, how they try to regenerate themselves to approach our ‘Zeitgeist’, and their lacking characteristics will be investigated throughout this article.
Interior image of the SEB Collection featuring artworks in its collection. Courtesy: SEB Collection.
Corporations such as Deutsche Bank, UBS, and the Royal Bank of Canada have massive collections in which only a tiny bit of each is exhibited in public exhibitions and office spaces for employees. The formation of these collections had different objectives and reasons, in the beginning, to harness wealth and cultivate massive spaces. When J. Pierpont Morgan started to introduce world-class art to America, David Rockefeller followed the footsteps of the family, while a former Deutsche Bank employee Herbert Zapp started the company’s highly respected art foundation. Throughout their lifetimes, each collector evolved their ideas and cherished the works of beauty to make their collections one of the cornerstones of the art world.
Market & Cultural Value
When one thinks of the 55,000 artworks in the Deutsche Bank Collection, or over 30,000 works of art in the UBS Collection, possessing a large number of artworks is clearly a powerful tool as it is a symbol of wealth, class, and cultural awareness. And it is equally, if not more, important in private market deals. And it is equally, if not more, important in private market deals. The market value of these collections is estimated to be millions of pounds, which, if necessary, could even support the collectors’ personal finances. Yet, owning a vast number of works create a small financial asset in the banks' balance sheet compared to other investment vehicles of the institutions. Nevertheless, it still empowers companies with illiquid asset options to sell artworks in their collection when there is an opportunity in the market because of the value of art and its seemingly contradictory relationship to the economy in comparison to other assets. Whilst this has obvious financial implications for the company, such actions also affect the artists’ markets because of the institutional backing or withdrawal.
Furthermore, the cultural value of these collections has its vigour embedded in the diversity, inclusion capabilities, and equality stance for the wide variety of artists on display. Exhibitions or loan partnerships that corporate collections establish have the ability to pave the way for greater support for both emerging artists’ and curators’ careers through grants and exposure. Including new works or curatorial ideas by these individuals would provide excellent opportunities to showcase their talents on the big public stage.
Nam June Paik, Video Flag Y, 1985. JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. © Estate of Nam June Paik. Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Mutual Relations
In the years preceding the establishment of these collections in the 1960s, corporate collections flourished. However, they were characterised by nationalistic gestures, had a local focus and were steeped in gender-biased attitudes. Today, corporate collections look very different. Specifically, they have started changing their business and perspective to focus on more international audiences, voices, and communities. In an economic sense, investment by banks into emerging artists’ careers simultaneously creates enormous support and increases the public's awareness of that artwork, which eventually surges the market valuation of that artist and those works. This mutually beneficial attitude contributes to the provenance of the artworks and attracts a greater number of potential interested buyers in the future.
On the other hand, the support of a well-known corporate collection for an artist or under-represented community has the power to influence the visitors of the works by changing their mindset about common social problems, issues of discrimination, and inequality that those individuals face every day. For example, many issues faced by native communities are visually accessible and can be readily reflected upon by audiences by including these types of works in corporate collections. UBS’ support for Cherokee and Choctaw descent artist Jeffrey Gibson and Royal Bank of Canada’s acquisition of a work by artist Rita Letendre, whose family was the natives of First Nations Abenaki, demonstrate banks’ will to respect native and old communities. Thus, corporate collections have the capacity to bring about a significant impact on the art world by giving attention to important causes that would otherwise likely not be seen in newspaper headlines.
Olafur Eliasson, Power Sharing Planet, 2017. Courtesy: SEB Bank Collection.
Commissions, Lending and Selling
Nowadays, corporate collections are controlled by more educated art world professionals than they were in the past. Specifically, the employment of art professionals changed norms in the sector by putting more art historical & socially inclusive approaches to art on the table, creating an even greater blend between a collector’s passion and considerations of their purse.
Recently, many collections, such as Societe Generale, have requested commissions from artists or collectives they wish to be involved with. Through this endeavour, artists have much more freedom to express themselves as they can often work on a much larger scale and have been given funds to realise this vision without having to deal with financial struggles.
Secondly, collections like Microsoft have actively created community works, events, and competitions to further support their cause of reaching out to new, diverse, and young audiences. Furthermore, they often lend their works to institutions across the world to showcase new talent or rare works of art to new audiences and give out grants for conservation projects without incurring any costs in most cases. In this scenario, visitors could enjoy these private works in person for the first time occasionally. Most importantly, many corporate collections such as Deutsche Bank and SEB Bank have been selling their artworks by renowned artists to keep up with the ‘Zeitgeist’ of our times. This includes selling excessive amounts of works that are predominantly created without any particular attitude towards different ethnicities, genders, and cultures.
Idris Khan installation: The Seasons, 2021. Ongoing Public Installation, Deutsche Bank Center, New York. Image Courtesy: Sean Kelly Gallery.
Disadvantages for the Art World
However, regeneration in corporate collections also has its challenges and drawbacks. Although selling excess inventory to make space for new acquisitions is one of the principal approaches of these institutions, announcing what they sell publicly could impact the artists’ prices. Ultimately this behaviour could encourage collectors who own works by that artist to sell their artworks as well, assuming an institution deems that artist, or type of work as less valuable than other works in their collection. Moreover, choosing new works of art for the collections could present issues as to what or who needs to be collected. Whatever they acquire to replace something sold has the potential to speak volumes about that business interests and priorities.
Secondly, this process can be influenced by corporations’ financial goals, self-promotion, and PR policies. Because of that, the selection of works and grants can depend on these external factors rather than only fostering dialogues in cultural & art worlds, aesthetics, and supporting underrepresented communities. Ultimately, institutions could use PR bias for their advantage rather than for regenerating the art perspective in their minds, meaning that companies are then associated with a certain type of outlook that might not reflect their ethos.
In recent years, the #MeToo campaign, the School Strikes for Climate, the Covid-19 crisis, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the invasion of Ukraine, to name but a few, have wildly affected how big corporations think about their collections and how they can manage to change the way they think. Since then, change has been more rapid and inevitable than ever.
Looking to the future, new improvements in corporate collections could come from the transparency of their acquisitions, selling, and separation of self-promotion from supporting the art world. Clarity of their financial statements could give the art world and the public much more accessible and reliable information for future developments and investments in this space.
Aside from this, separating PR agendas from truly supporting art world participants could allow for the collection to find greater success. This is especially because there would be distance between the biased opinions and criticism projected by the media, who question whether these corporations want to support the arts or it is all for their financial and smoke show philanthropic goals, from the collection’s true ethos.
Yet, one cannot question that, from their beginnings, corporate collections have constantly reinvented and regenerated their image and personal mission. This is also true of their artistic contents as they are ultimately visual tools to reflect changes in the company, particularly concerning generational conversations, evolving diversity and increased awareness for social dialogues taking place. But there is still room for improvement. The business and art worlds are responsible for working together to make these characteristics permanent and adding new perspectives to make art space more contemporary for all in the future.
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Cenk Usel
Contributing Writer, MADE IN BED