corporate art

Bank Art Sold In Ireland

The Bank of Ireland has raised around $2 million by selling off some of its Irish artworks. The Washington Post reported that Adam's auction house sold off 144 works this week. Bank of Ireland decided to sell the art after a recent bailout but the money isn't going back to the bank, instead the money will be donated to local charities. The auction was the subject of some controversy with protestors outside protesting the banks. The auction house moved the auction to Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel after noting the large amount of interest in the auction. The auction house is examining the bank's remaining works for potential future sales and Ireland's five other Irish banks are considering the sale of their own art collections. The sale follows other bank-owned art sales around the world.

Tags: art sell off, bank of ireland, corporate art

Museum of Fine Arts Boston Receives Major Donation From Bank of America

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art, Big Givers

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) announced a major donation from Bank of America this week. The gift will be split between $5 million in funding and $5 million in art from the Bank of America collection, making the bank the MFA's largest corporate donor. Among the art gifts is Ellsworth Kelly's oil painting "Blue Green Yellow Orange Red," (1968) a 22-foot-long abstract work which will hang in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art set to in September 2011. The money gift will support museum exhibitions and programs as well as operating expenses, and capital improvements. The bank will also be supporting special events surrounding the November opening of the museum's new wing for the Art of the Americas and Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard. Although many museums have struggled to raise money recently, between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010, the MFA received $57 million in funds and art. Bank of America has given a total of more than $15 million to the MFA. The bank's previous gift of $5 million to the Museum's Building the New MFA campaign (2001–2008) provided funding for the MFA's building project. The museum has named the plaza in front of its Huntington Avenue entrance the "Bank of America Plaza on the Avenue of the Arts."

[via ArtFix Daily]

Tags: art donation, bank of america, corporate art, ellsworth kelly, museum of fine arts

More Lehman Corporate Heads To Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art, Crimes and Misdemeanors

It's been two years since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy (check out our sister blog Daily Finance's coverage of the event). Since then, gradually we've seen much of the company's corporate art go up for sale. On September 25, Sotheby's New York will sell the $10 million art collection of Lehman Brothers and of the money manager it bought in 2003, Neuberger Berman. As the NY Observer puts it the Sotheby's sale offers a glimpse into Wall Street's glory days. What's intriguing is that the art advisors bought with both their hearts and their wallets, buying works from "name" artists that had failed to sell at auction in the hopes that the pieces would be worth more later. It looks like we'll soon find out.

The most expensive piece in the auction is Damien Hirst's We've Got Style (The Vessel Collection-Blue), which should bring in around $1 million (nearly a bargain by Hirst standards). Other pieces include Takashi Murakami's 1998 Chaos and Untitled I by Julie Mehretu which is estimated by Sotheby's at $600,000 to $800,000.

The Observer article also addresses the issue of provenance. Will the idea of picking over the remains of Lehman Brothers tempt or turn off potential buyers? The sale was once called the Lehman auction, then it was the Neuberger Berman & Lehman Brothers auction but now it's just the Neuberger Berman auction on the Sotheby's website. Check out the Observer article for more info on some of the price pieces being auctioned off including the Richard Prince painting shown at right.

Tags: art, corporate art, lehman brothers, neuberger berman

Bank of America's Contemporary Art To Go On Display

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Lately it seems that corporate art is spending less time in offices where only a few can delight and into museums where the art is on display for all. Bank of America's art will be on display at the new Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina this fall. October 1 will bring "New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection" to the museum. It will showcase more than more than 60 paintings, sculptures, works on paper and photographs by American artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella. Ed Ruscha's Clockspeed is shown at right. Pieces date from 1945 to the present.

"(Charlotte) is (Bank of America's) headquarters and the Mint is the flagship arts institution," said Allen Blevins, senior vice president and director of the bank's corporate art program in a quote in the Charlotte Observer. "It's going to be a phenomenal show."

The Bank of America Collection is said to be one of the largest and finest in the world although the size and value are not known. The collection is focused on contemporary American art. The bank did not set out to collect art but it did collect banks. The art was acquired by banks in different parts of the country which were later acquired by Bank of America and so it includes artists from a variety of U.S. cities. The exhibit includes many large pieces, some of which haven't been seen on the East Coast before. The Observer article says that while the Mint had pick of the litter in assembling the exhibit, it was Bank of America that picked up the tab when it came to the many costs of staging the exhibit including crating and shipping. The Mint will keep the money earned from ticket sales. The exhibit is part of Bank of America's Art in our Communities program. From 2008 to 2010, Bank of America will have loaned more than 30 exhibitions to museums internationally.

Tags: art, bank of america, charlotte, corporate art, mint museum, museums, north carolina

John Deere Corporate Art Goes On Display In Iowa Museum

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

You might not think of the folks behind John Deere tractors as art collectors but the Midwestern company has been collecting art for decades. The company has amassed hundreds of works of art from around the world including pieces from Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Marc Chagall and Alexander Calder. For the first time the company is putting its collection on display. The Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa recently opened a permanent gallery to display highlights from the John Deere Collection on a rotating basis. The first exhibition: Global Currents: The John Deere Art Collection runs until October 24. The company still owns the art but different pieces from the collection will cycle through the gallery several times a year on an ongoing basis.

The collection started in 1965 when the late William Hewitt, then chairman of the company, started collecting to decorate the company's new Eero Saarinen-designed headquarters. Since that time the company shipped in major pieces from places where it did business.

Many of Deere's artworks represent international abstract trends but one of the most significant pieces in the collection reflects Deere's line of work. Grant Wood's 1931 painting Fall Plowing, shown at right, depicts the countryside of Iowa and in the foreground is the self-scouring steel plow invented by John Deere.

[via Des Moines Register]

Tags: corporate art, davenport iowa, figge art museum, john deere, museum

Corporate Art or Corporate Scandal for Samsung

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

The hunger for art, or more aptly his wife's hunger for art, can get a man in trouble. Lee Kun-hee, chairman of Samsung, allegedly used over $64 million from a corporate slush fund to buy art for his wife Ra Hee Hong Lee who is director-general of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. The big mystery is, where has the art gone? It hasn't been exhibited in Korea and its whereabouts is presently unknown. Samsung has denied the allegations but the National Assembly has approved an independent investigation. The move has caused other Korean corporations to stop buying art and caused the country's two main auction houses to report a 20% drop in sales.

One painting in question is Roy Lichtenstein's Happy Tears, 1964, bought at Christie's New York in 2002 for $7,159,500, a record price for the artist at the time. The painting is said to have been bought at the auction on behalf of the chairman's wife by Hong Seong-won, director of the Seoul-based Seomi Gallery. Kim Yong-chul, head of the legal department of the Samsung Group Restructuring Office from 1997 to 2004, has released a full list of the art alleged to have been bought with money from the Samsung slush fund as well as details of payments made to Christie's that according to The Art Newspaper, includes 30 paintings and photographs including works by Donald Judd, Gerhard Richter and David Hockney. Samsung supplied The Art Newspaper with a statement saying that the allegations are groundless and that the list is of works of art purchased by Seomi Gallery alone and that neither Mrs Hong Lee nor the Samsung Museum of Art were involved in the purchase of "Happy Tears." Where is "Happy Tears" now? Seomi Gallery first said they sold"Happy Tears" to a private collector and then quickly retracted that and told Korean reporters she still had the painting but that other works on the list have been sold to various collectors.

Source

Tags: corporate art, korea, lee kun-hee, roy lichtenstein, samsung