Do corporate art collections make sense?

Deutsche Bank wants clients and employees entering its new office in the City of London to think beyond money and work when they see the enormous curved steel sculpture created by British-Indian artist Sir Anish Kapoor.

“Turning the world upside down III” – or “the Silver Ball”, as the staff knows it – represents a warning about “the fragility of ideas”, according to a guide, and is part of the bank’s more than 50,000 works . collection. Elsewhere in the glass-fronted headquarters at 21 Moorfields are newly commissioned pieces from young British artists Simeon Barclay, Claire Hooper and Rene Matić, along with acquisitions by John Akomfrah, Noémie Goudal and Gavin Turk.

Overall, Deutsche offices in 40 countries house one of the most important corporate collections of modern art built up over decades. It aims not only to be “visually interesting” but also “thought-provoking and challenging,” says Britta Färber, the bank’s global head of arts and culture.

As return-to-office mandates tighten, employers, using a combination of carrot and stick, see attractive work environments as key to attracting staff back to their desks.

Art should have a “positive impact on employees” [providing] a vibrant and creative environment to work in,” adds Färber, and should be a way to attract “talented new employees and clients.”

Deutsche, whose commitment to art arises despite cost cuts including redundancies at the bank, he expects staff to work between three and five days a week at Square Mile, depending on their role.

“Reappropriation of office spaces after being so empty [has made curators] “Reevaluate the way we display art in the workplace.” . . to reinforce a sense of belonging and purpose,” says Delphine Munro, president of the International Association of Corporate Contemporary Art Collections, a nonprofit organization with members from more than 50 corporate collections. “Art creates a more conducive, less anonymous environment.”

While reducing office space is a challenge, “it is also an opportunity to commission site-specific works,” adds Munro. “Multifunctional spaces [including canteens and lobbies] have allowed collectors to play a more dynamic role. “Art is a focal point.”

Magnus Resch, academic and author, most recently of How to collect art, says that the purpose of corporate art collections has changed: “Historically, [they] It was often about prestige and demonstrating the success and stability of a company. Sometimes top executives had the opportunity to select artists they admired and present themselves personally as important patrons of the arts. [even though the company was covering the costs].”

Corporate collections remain an investment opportunity, but are now also used as a way to develop relationships with potential clients. Increasingly, in-house expertise is a way to interact with wealthy private clients.

According to Resch, many smaller collectors have seen their acquisition budgets drop to a fraction of what they were. But for big collectors in the financial services industry, including Deutsche, JPMorgan and Bank of America, art is also “a commitment to high-net-worth individual clients,” says Christy Coombs, head of Sotheby’s corporate art and museums group. . “Therefore, banks are also seen aligning themselves with major art fairs as a complementary tool to attract customers.” Through fundraising and event sponsorship, notably Frieze, Deutsche has become known as “a bank that takes art seriously,” says Färber.

Collectors are grappling with new trends: hybrid work but also employee diversity and sensitivity to the subject.

The corporate social responsibility mission intensified after the pandemic, says Munro, director of arts and culture at the European Investment Bank, who runs an artist development program and owns a collection of around 1,000 works.

The Black Lives Matter movement was a factor that pushed many collections to revise their work. At the EIB, the criteria was expanded from European nationals to artists living in Europe, “which allowed us to acquire works by artists with African-American, Asian and Middle Eastern origins. [backgrounds]”says Munro. “That has led to increased loan applications.” A work by Kapwani Kiwanga, who lives between Canada and France, and which deals with the uprising in Haiti has been loaned four times to different museums.

At Deutsche there has been a push to make women more visible as artists and subjects, for example with Mathilde ter Heijne’s ‘Woman to Go’ exhibition: a series of vintage postcards on mounted shelves, depicting photographs of women taken between 1839 and the 1920s. More than 50 percent of the additions to Deutsche’s global collection in the last five years have been works by women. In the City of London office, 48 per cent of the pieces are by female, non-binary and transgender artists. “We are working on it,” says Färber.

Violence or sexual content tends to be prohibited; Other topics can be thorny. But “caution does not mean applying censorship,” Munro emphasizes.

For the past nine years, law firm Travers Smith has appointed a small team of staff to select artists for graduation exhibitions at the University of Westminster and the Royal College of Art. It shows their work in its London offices and offers artists commercial and legal support. Joseph Wren, a partner leading the initiative, says the program helps “students transition into professional life.”

“We’re not trying to have things that are so shocking that people get angry. But I repeat, we also don’t always want to go to the place where everything is so [bland] as to provoke absolutely no debate,” says Wren. “Many companies take a very basic approach. That’s why it’s not strange for people to say [to us]: ‘That’s really interesting or that’s really brave.’”

Recent controversies over fossil fuels and cultural institutions (such as Baillie Gifford ending its sponsorship of literary festivals after Hay abandoned it) show that the relationship between art and corporations can be contentious.

However, Jeremy Epstein, co-founder of Edel Assanti, who represents Goudal, whose spliced-up photograph is in the lobby of Deutsche Bank, says: “From the outside there is an opinion that a corporate collection is a faceless company, but… . .[some curators can be]incredibly present in the London art world.” Recognize that the relationship between art and money can be difficult. “Sure, it would be great to curate collections that have perfect brand synergy, but we should want people from all walks of life to be excited about contemporary art.”

Goudal says he researches companies interested in buying or commissioning his work. “A commission needs to align with my practice, not just be an additional exercise, otherwise I would end up not treating it properly,” he says. “But I haven’t been in a situation yet where I’ve turned something down.”

The advantage for artists, Resch says, is that “corporations are not seen as flippers, they tend to pay promptly and can enhance the artist’s brand through the association. On the other hand, the purchasing process may take longer due to the need for multiple approvals before finalizing the transaction.”

Companies may sell works to channel proceeds toward charitable initiatives or “because they have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the increased value of an object,” Coombs says.

British Airways parent company IAG sold works including those by Bridget Riley and Damien Hirst as aviation was severely affected during the pandemic. “They couldn’t really hold on [Riley’s] work, it’s on their books as an asset,” says Franka Haiderer, Sotheby’s business development director for Europe and Asia.

American retailer Neiman Marcus sold Alexander Calder’s “Mariposa” (1951) mobile for $18.2 million in 2020 after the company emerged from bankruptcy and focused more on online sales, so it had fewer buildings in which to display art.

Deutsche Bank has sold works by Wassily Kandinsky and Egon Schiele because, it says, they did not fit with its focus on modern artists. Färber prefers not to talk about value. “We do not collect art to invest. We have art in our buildings. . . We want to open the work to our clients and colleagues and [the] general public when [hold] for exhibitions.