Corporate wall art collections continue to grow
Published on: 15-Jun-2007
The curator of Microsoft's large wall art collection has spoken out about the growth of corporate art compilations - and the peculiar difficulties associated with the role.Since beginning a wall art collection in 1987, computer giant Microsoft has now amassed 4,500 pieces of contemporary art, including a prized two-storey wall drawing by Sol LeWitt.
According to Micrsoft's curator Laura Matzer, the trend began in the late 70s.
"Wherever you looked, it became fashionable to be knowledgeable about art," she told the Associated Press. "That's when the whole corporate art collecting really went crazy."
While Microsoft's wall art craze began at a time when the company had just one campus with six buildings, vast expansion since means Matzer is now curator of mini-art collections in 80 buildings in the US, as well as at international sites in Japan and Denmark.
And, Matzer continued, that not only means having to take a fragmented approach to exhibitions, but also deal with a viewing public who often lack understanding or are simply "antagonistic" to those pieces they see.
Other notable corporate collections are the 50,000-strong selection of works owned by Deutsche Bank, which includes paintings by Picasso and Gerhard Richter, and that of the Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, which features an iconic Andy Warhol serigraph of Chairman Mao.
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