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 calls it– represents a warning about “the fragility of ideas,” according to one guide, and is part of the more than 50 thousand works from the bank’s 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, alongside acquisitions by John Akomfrah, Noémie Goudal and Gavin Turk.
Overall, Deutsche offices in 40 countries host one of the most important corporate collections of modern art accumulated over the decades. Its goal is not only to be “visually interesting,” but also “thought-provoking and challenging”says Britta Färber, global head of arts and culture at the bank.
As orders to return to the office tighten, employers, using a combination of incentives and punishments, believe that workers attractive work environments They are key to motivating staff to return to their desks.
Art should have a “positive impact on employees (providing them with) a vibrant and creative environment to work in,” adds Färber, and should be a way to attract “talented new employees as well as clients.”
Deutsche, whose commitment to art occurs despite the cost cuts including layoffs at the bankexpects staff to work between three and five days a week in the Square Mile (as the City of London is also known), depending on their role.
“The reappropriation of office spaces after being so empty (made the curators) reevaluate the way we display art in the workplace…to reinforce the sense of belonging and purpose” says Delphine Munro, president of the International Association of Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art, a nonprofit organization with members from more than 50 corporate collections. “Art creates a more conducive, less anonymous environment.”
While a small office space is a challenge, “it is also an opportunity to commission site-specific works,” adds Munro. “Multifunctional spaces (including dining rooms and hallways) allow collectors to play a more dynamic role. Art is a focal point”.
Magnus Resch, academic and writer, most recently of How To Collect Art, says that the purpose of corporate art collections changed: “Historically, they were (often) about prestige and demonstrating the success and stability of a company. “Top executives were sometimes given the opportunity to select artists they admired and present themselves personally as important patrons of the arts (although the company covered the costs).”
Corporate collections remain an investment opportunity, but are now also used as a way of develop relationships with potential clients. Increasingly, in-house expertise is a way to engage with wealthy private clients.
According to Resch, many smaller collectors came to see their acquisition budgets shrink 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 about “he commitment to high net worth individual clients” says Christy Coombs, head of Sotheby’s corporate art and museums group.
“Therefore, you also see banks aligning themselves with the big art fairs as a complementary tool to cultivate clients”. Through collecting and sponsoring events, particularly Frieze, Deutsche has become “a bank that takes art seriously,” says Färber.
Collectors have to deal with new trends, hybrid work, but also with the diversity and with the sensitivities of employees towards the themes.
The Social Responsibility mission intensified after the pandemic, says Munro, who is director of arts and culture at the European Investment Bank (EIB), which runs an artist development program and owns a collection of around a thousand works.
The Black Lives Matter movement was a driving factor to many collections to review his work. At the EIB, the criteria was expanded from European citizens to artists living in Europe, “allowing us to acquire works by artists with African American, Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds,” says Munro. “That led to higher loan applications.” A piece by Kapwani Kiwanga, who lives between Canada and France and deals with the uprising in Haiti, has been loaned four times to different museums.
At Deutsche there is a effort to make women more visible as artists and subjectsfor example with the exhibition Woman to Go by Mathilde ter Heijne: a series of vintage postcards on mounted shelves, depicting photos of women taken between 1839 and the 1920s. More than 50 percent of the additions to the global collection of Deutsche in the last five years have been works by women. In the City of London office, 48 percent of the pieces are female artists, non-binary and transgender artists. “We are working on it,” says Färber.
Violence or sexual content is usually prohibited; Other topics can be thorny. But “being cautious 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 displays their work in its London offices and offers artists business and legal support. Joseph Wren, a partner who leads the initiative, says the program helps “students transition into professional life.”
“We’re not trying to have things that are so shocking make people angry. But then again, we also don’t always want to get to the place where everything is so (bland) that it provokes absolutely no debate,” Wren says. “Many companies take the very conventional approach. That’s why it’s not unusual for people to tell us: ‘That’s really interesting or that’s really brave.’”
Recent controversies over fossil fuels and cultural institutions – such as the fact that Baillie Gifford stopped sponsoring literary festivals after the Hay organization abandoned it – show that relationship between art and corporations can be turbulent.
However, Jeremy Epstein, co-founder of Edel Assanti, who represents Goudal, whose spliced photograph is in the lobby of Deutsche Bank, says: “From the outside you think that a corporate collection is a faceless company, but… (some curators they can be) incredibly present in the London art world.” Recognize that The relationship between art and money can be difficult. “It would certainly be great to curate collections that have perfect brand synergy, but we should want contemporary art to excite people from all walks of life.”
he says
“It would be great to select collections that have perfect brand synergy,
But we should want contemporary art to excite people from all walks of life.”
Goudal says that Investigate companies interested in buying or commissioning your work. “A commission must be in line with my practice, not just a secondary 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, says Resch, is that “corporations are not seen as resellersthey tend to pay quickly and can enhance the artist’s brand through the partnership. On the other hand, the purchasing process may take longer due to the need for multiple approvals before the transaction is finalized.”
Companies can sell works to channel the proceeds to charitable initiatives or “because they have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the increase in value of an object,” Coombs says.
British Airways parent IAG sold works including those by Bridget Riley and Damien Hirst as aviation was hit hard during the pandemic. “They couldn’t really keep (Riley’s) work, eIt’s on their books as an asset.” says Franka Haiderer, Sotheby’s business development director for Europe and Asia.
The American retailer Neiman Marcus sold Alexander Calder’s “Mariposa” mobile phone (1951), for $18.2 million in 2020, after the company emerged from bankruptcy focused more on online sales, so it had fewer buildings in which to display art.
Deutsche Bank sold works by Wassily Kandinsky and Egon Schiele because, it says, they didn’t 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, colleagues and the general public when we hold exhibitions.”
The evolution of the corporate portrait
When she was young, businesswoman Rose Hulse I rarely saw portraits of successful women of color. So a year ago he commissioned Frances Bell to paint it. “I am a woman in technology who has reached a certain level. “I wanted a painting that reflected that,” he says.
Hulse will hang the portrait in his home rather than the company office to reflect his sentiment that ““I am more than a company”. But he also didn’t want to reinforce the hierarchy. “It’s not just me. I run a flat organization. “It would be quite vain.”
While the pictures of directors of long-standing institutions – universities, unions and public companies – hang in public, More and more business founders commission self-portraits for private use, according to Martina Merelli, director of fine art commissions at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. “Business owners are a little more careful. “They prefer to have it at home.”
In part, that’s due to the rise of remote work. “Portraits are quite influential objects, they are great tactile things. It makes less and less sense for people to meet online,” Bell says. “Businesses still need beautiful buildingsbut I wonder if that element of projecting longevity and stability is as important as it was, and if (it works) in the younger generation.
Alastair Adams, who has painted members of the Timpson family and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, says some institutions have become more selective when choosing who to commemorate in a portrait. “If the company’s first CEO is a woman, that’s the kind of thing you would share.”
Now, more subjects choose not to wear a suitsays Merelli. “Many CEOs don’t pose for their painting in a suit and tie. We just finished a recent portrait: the business owner was wearing a t-shirt; This is how he behaves at work every day.”
Hulse is optimistic about his own work. “Portraits are important. When we all perish and pass away, that moment remains. It’s the way an artist sees you, he gets lost in a photograph.”
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