Corporate Culture: A History of Corporate Art Collecting, The Fleming Collection, London
The exhibition Corporate Culture opened in the same week in June that the Museums Association (MA) launched Collections for the Future, the findings of its inquiry into how museums and galleries in the UK might best serve the needs of users.
The MA intends to reinvigorate the debate about collections, and encourage a greater proportion of the UK's museum artefacts to be actively used. Indeed, one of its proposals is that museums should work with collections in private ownership to better exploit their public value.
This is precisely what the Fleming Collection does. Based on the collection of Scottish art originally acquired by the former merchant bank, Robert Fleming & Co, the museum, which is run by the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, opened to the public in January 2002. Corporate Culture brings together works from nine private art collections.
Collections for the Future and Corporate Culture inevitably raise a number of questions about allowing the public to see works from private collections. Is it simply enough to increase access to objects that are usually inaccessible?
Is it reasonable to differentiate between expectations of public and private sector curation? Who is most likely to benefit from making public that which is usually private? How public is public?
Corporate Culture is as good a place as any to start looking for answers. The companies represented in the exhibition are a disparate lot. They include the law firm Clifford Chance; the specialist insurer Hiscox; the liquor manufacturer Drambuie; the fashion retailer Monsoon; the consumer goods company Unilever; and three financial institutions - Deutsche Bank, ING and JP Morgan Chase.
Not only do their focuses vary, but the companies maintain quite different balances between the relative privacy of their collections and public access to them.
The earliest objects in the exhibition date back to the 1740s, although at least a third of the exhibits were made in the past five years. The highlights include Jacobean engraved glass (from the Drambuie Collection), a 1915 Suprematist drawing by Malevitch (Hiscox), and recent pieces by Jack McFadyen (Fleming), RB Kitaj and Jörg Immendorff (Deutsche Bank).
The reputations of some of the artists in the show partly depend on their work having caused offence in the past - Gilbert and George and David Mach, in particular. But the blandness of their pieces in the exhibition suggests that they can also satisfy the requirements of corporate collection perfectly.
Their works are decorative; they function like any other business asset; they serve as an antidote to the daily grind; and they can be interpreted as sharing the ethos of the companies whose collections they are in and as representing their values.
But if the companies have similar expectations of their acquisitions, what they actually do with those collections is very different. Monsoon and ING's collections, for example, focus on the companies' offices.
Other collections are more outward looking. Hiscox, for instance, not only collects but sponsors and promotes art through Hiscox Art Projects and at the Hiscox Art Cafe (where it is showing an extension of Corporate Culture).
The Deutsche Bank, which owns some 50,000 art works, runs the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, in partnership with the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation.
It also maintains an active exhibition programme of its own, has a high-profile sponsorship programme and operates an advisory service to help its staff and private clients buy art.
Corporate Culture is primarily intended to be celebratory. Its self-congratulatory mood is exemplified by David Mach's description of Unilever, whose collection he represents in the exhibition, and which is used in both the panels and the catalogue.
'Unilever, a force for civilisation, appears to me a most sophisticated company, operating on a truly global level, reaching all nationalities, all colours and all creeds. Their products reach right into the heart of our lives.'
Unfortunately, such self-aggrandisement appears to have substituted for what might have been some more critical, if not strategic, thinking behind the exhibition's curation.
The introductory panel describes one of the exhibition's intentions as being to rectify several widely held misconceptions about how and why corporations buy art.
These are associated with a number of factors:
the generally negative tone of corporate art's press coverage (usually prompted by companies selling off their collections in response to takeovers or financial difficulties);
the depressing fact that corporate art collections' spokespeople sometimes have little understanding of 'the industry'
the collections' own vulnerability to the lack of regulation in the art world - 'anyone can set themselves up as a consultant or open an gallery selling bad art to companies or individuals who don't know any better'
the fallacy that companies have huge budgets, purchase indiscriminately and in volume.
The articulation of such sensitivities suggests that corporate collections aspire to the condition of public collections.
It also implies that corporate curators regard as ideologically potent, the reluctance of museums to dispose of individual objects or collections; the high status they attach to scholarship; and the fact that they pursue strategic acquisitions policies (although often as a response to their financial impoverishment).
The fact that aspects of Corporate Culture's wish list is reminiscent of the issues that informed Collections for the Future could be regarded as ironic, since the MA's inquiry was about the future of public museums.
As an outsider, one might have imagined that it would be well within companies' capabilities to make a better case for the value of their collections. Unfortunately, Corporate Culture doesn't do it.
If the collections that it represents have really become part of their company's 'culture', what kind of difference have they made to it? If Corporate Culture wanted to get away from the idea that companies use their collections to realise their investment or liquidate some of their assets, why did it include Drambuie?
In May 2005, well before the exhibition opened, the auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull announced plans to sell the Drambuie Collection of Scottish Art as part of an attempt to rationalise the company's assets.
If the exhibition wanted to make the point that the value which companies place on their collections isn't predominantly financial, why did the Fleming Collection draw visitors' attention to the very favourable market for works by Samuel John Peploe, whose work is among the Drambuie Collection?
And if the participating companies really love art as much as they say they do, why is so little of the information provided by their respective curators, consultants and advisers actually about the works themselves?
Sara Selwood is the head of the department of cultural policy and management, City University, and the editor of Cultural Trends
Project data
Cost: £6,000
Funder: Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation
Curator: Selina Skipwith at the Fleming Collection
Exhibition ends: 3 September 2005
The exhibition Corporate Culture opened in the same week in June that the Museums Association (MA) launched Collections for the Future, the findings of its inquiry into how museums and galleries in the UK might best serve the needs of users.
The MA intends to reinvigorate the debate about collections, and encourage a greater proportion of the UK's museum artefacts to be actively used. Indeed, one of its proposals is that museums should work with collections in private ownership to better exploit their public value.
This is precisely what the Fleming Collection does. Based on the collection of Scottish art originally acquired by the former merchant bank, Robert Fleming & Co, the museum, which is run by the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, opened to the public in January 2002. Corporate Culture brings together works from nine private art collections.
Collections for the Future and Corporate Culture inevitably raise a number of questions about allowing the public to see works from private collections. Is it simply enough to increase access to objects that are usually inaccessible?
Is it reasonable to differentiate between expectations of public and private sector curation? Who is most likely to benefit from making public that which is usually private? How public is public?
Corporate Culture is as good a place as any to start looking for answers. The companies represented in the exhibition are a disparate lot. They include the law firm Clifford Chance; the specialist insurer Hiscox; the liquor manufacturer Drambuie; the fashion retailer Monsoon; the consumer goods company Unilever; and three financial institutions - Deutsche Bank, ING and JP Morgan Chase.
Not only do their focuses vary, but the companies maintain quite different balances between the relative privacy of their collections and public access to them.
The earliest objects in the exhibition date back to the 1740s, although at least a third of the exhibits were made in the past five years. The highlights include Jacobean engraved glass (from the Drambuie Collection), a 1915 Suprematist drawing by Malevitch (Hiscox), and recent pieces by Jack McFadyen (Fleming), RB Kitaj and Jörg Immendorff (Deutsche Bank).
The reputations of some of the artists in the show partly depend on their work having caused offence in the past - Gilbert and George and David Mach, in particular. But the blandness of their pieces in the exhibition suggests that they can also satisfy the requirements of corporate collection perfectly.
Their works are decorative; they function like any other business asset; they serve as an antidote to the daily grind; and they can be interpreted as sharing the ethos of the companies whose collections they are in and as representing their values.
But if the companies have similar expectations of their acquisitions, what they actually do with those collections is very different. Monsoon and ING's collections, for example, focus on the companies' offices.
Other collections are more outward looking. Hiscox, for instance, not only collects but sponsors and promotes art through Hiscox Art Projects and at the Hiscox Art Cafe (where it is showing an extension of Corporate Culture).
The Deutsche Bank, which owns some 50,000 art works, runs the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, in partnership with the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation.
It also maintains an active exhibition programme of its own, has a high-profile sponsorship programme and operates an advisory service to help its staff and private clients buy art.
Corporate Culture is primarily intended to be celebratory. Its self-congratulatory mood is exemplified by David Mach's description of Unilever, whose collection he represents in the exhibition, and which is used in both the panels and the catalogue.
'Unilever, a force for civilisation, appears to me a most sophisticated company, operating on a truly global level, reaching all nationalities, all colours and all creeds. Their products reach right into the heart of our lives.'
Unfortunately, such self-aggrandisement appears to have substituted for what might have been some more critical, if not strategic, thinking behind the exhibition's curation.
The introductory panel describes one of the exhibition's intentions as being to rectify several widely held misconceptions about how and why corporations buy art.
These are associated with a number of factors:
the generally negative tone of corporate art's press coverage (usually prompted by companies selling off their collections in response to takeovers or financial difficulties);
the depressing fact that corporate art collections' spokespeople sometimes have little understanding of 'the industry'
the collections' own vulnerability to the lack of regulation in the art world - 'anyone can set themselves up as a consultant or open an gallery selling bad art to companies or individuals who don't know any better'
the fallacy that companies have huge budgets, purchase indiscriminately and in volume.
The articulation of such sensitivities suggests that corporate collections aspire to the condition of public collections.
It also implies that corporate curators regard as ideologically potent, the reluctance of museums to dispose of individual objects or collections; the high status they attach to scholarship; and the fact that they pursue strategic acquisitions policies (although often as a response to their financial impoverishment).
The fact that aspects of Corporate Culture's wish list is reminiscent of the issues that informed Collections for the Future could be regarded as ironic, since the MA's inquiry was about the future of public museums.
As an outsider, one might have imagined that it would be well within companies' capabilities to make a better case for the value of their collections. Unfortunately, Corporate Culture doesn't do it.
If the collections that it represents have really become part of their company's 'culture', what kind of difference have they made to it? If Corporate Culture wanted to get away from the idea that companies use their collections to realise their investment or liquidate some of their assets, why did it include Drambuie?
In May 2005, well before the exhibition opened, the auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull announced plans to sell the Drambuie Collection of Scottish Art as part of an attempt to rationalise the company's assets.
If the exhibition wanted to make the point that the value which companies place on their collections isn't predominantly financial, why did the Fleming Collection draw visitors' attention to the very favourable market for works by Samuel John Peploe, whose work is among the Drambuie Collection?
And if the participating companies really love art as much as they say they do, why is so little of the information provided by their respective curators, consultants and advisers actually about the works themselves?
Sara Selwood is the head of the department of cultural policy and management, City University, and the editor of Cultural Trends
Project data
Cost: £6,000
Funder: Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation
Curator: Selina Skipwith at the Fleming Collection
Exhibition ends: 3 September 2005
