The Integrated Art Collection

De toekomstige rol van de kunstcollectie in het communicatieve beleid
Symposiumverslag

Rosemary Harris
NatWest Group, London Conservator NatWest Group Art Collection

De NatWest Group, een van de grootste Britse banken, bezit een collectie die bestaat uit meer dan 1500 werken. Het meerendeel van de collectie bestaat uit moderne Britse kunst. De bank opende in februari van dit jaar de Lothbury Gallery; een permanente expositieruimte in de bankhal van het hoofdkantoor in Londen. Rosemary Harris is sinds 1995 conservator van de kunstcollectie van de NatWest Group. Daarvoor werkte ze vanaf 1986 als conservator voor de Tate Gallery in Londen.

NatWest and the Main Features of the Art Collection The National Westminster Bank is among the world's foremost banking and financial services organisations. We employ over 70,000 people. Our turnover is six billion pounds sterling. We are part of a world-wide industry which has evolved beyond recognition in the last 30 years. Traditionally banks sought to project an image of financial strength and permanence. This was reflected in the architecture of the buildings. These were lofty and daunting marble and mahagony banking halls.But, of course, the nature of financial services and banking has dramatically changed. The emphasis is on innovation and advanced technology. Contemporary concepts of office design and architecture have brought long white walls, glass and uniformity. A central feature of the new architecture was the abundance of wall space. These spaces were ideal for hanging paintings. These created a demand for works of art in keeping with the new architecture in order to 'decorate' offices. During the 1960s and the 1970s there was also a growing awareness of the positive role that art could play in the work place to promote a stimulating environment for both staff and visitors. Art could enhance the working environment and make a visual statement about the company's nature. The formation of NatWest's collection of contemporary art is thus directly linked to the development of architecture.

When I was employed two years ago as the first trained curator, having been at the Tate Gallery for nine years, I found a collection of over 1,500 items. We had paintings, drawings, photographs and prints; and silver, porcelain, clocks, furniture and tapestries. The main art collection has historic paintings from the seventeenth-century to nineteenth-century, collected almost at random; and works by twentieth-century British artists, collected to decorate modern offices. The historic works form only a small part of the Collection. They include topographical scenes such as Joseph Nicholls view of London, `A view of Charing Cross and Northumberland House', 1746. For me, however, the main fascination of the Collection, and the unique quality that it has, is the large number of pictures by post-war British artists. We were very lucky in the 1960s a new regional head office in Manchester was designed by the Casson Conder Partnership. The regional Chairman liked modern paintings and set about buying a collection of work by contemporary British artists. An art budget was established and 70 paintings and works on paper were purchased with specialist advice from Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery. Figurative and abstract works were acquired including in 1970 L.S. Lowry's 'The Mill, Early Morning', 1963. This work is characteristic of his images of industrial scenes and was an especially appropriate work because Lowry was born and studied in Manchester. But an association with Manchester was not an acquisition criterion. Frank Auerbach's painting of 'Primrose Hill', 1971, was painted near the artist's studio in Camden Town, London and acquired in the same year. Auerbach's principle subjects were figures and townscapes. 'Primrose Hill' is one of a series on the London Park and is typical of his rich and thickly painted works.

On the same theme of art following the architecture, in 1980 NatWest completed a major building designed by Seifert and Partners, the tallest Tower in the City of London. Again there was an allocated budget for works of art and specialist advice was obtained from the Contemporary Art Society. They assembled a Collection of 100 works by contemporary British artists, some represented by more than one work. Two painting by Ivon Hitchens were purchased, including 'Orange Flowers in a White Bowl,' 1960-1965. Hitchens concentrated on painting landscapes, flowers and occasionally nudes. He was particularly influenced by Cézanne and Matisse. In this painting Hitchens sought to represent the same lyrical qualities which he found in nature. Three Howard Hodgkin prints were purchased, one of which 'Bleeding', 1982 is a hand-coloured lithograph. Hodgkin's semi-abstract work relates to specific experiences. For him the process of making the work is an act of recollection in which he seeks equivalents in colour and form for his memories and impressions of a particular scene. In this instance, his memory is of a quarrel which took place in a Manhattan apartment. The richly decorated panels in this print were inspired by the Indian wall hangings in the apartment. Elisabeth Vellacott is represented by 4 drawings and by a painting 'Christ Driving the Photographers from King's College Chapel', 1981. This depicts King's College Chapel in Cambridge University near to where she lives. It is a contemporary interpretation of Christ driving the Pharisees from the temple in Jerusalem. The 'temple' here is King's College, a much visited venue for tourists and photographers.

The Collecting policy of the Art Collection
In the 1980s and early 1990s NatWest continued to acquire new works, but without a real artistic strategy. The concentration was still on British artists, but without a theme, and with a greater focus on figurative rather than modern abstract works. And paintings were randomly scattered through buildings, with many of them seen by very few people, and often not at all by the public. Three years ago the Bank's senior management reviewed the future of the Collection. It was decided that the accidental gathering together of so much good painting should be used to a better effect. An early decision was to make the management of the Collection more professional. Advertise-ments were placed in the arts press for the job I now fill.

Working with one senior executive, we have developed a combined acquisitions and disposals policy to rationalise and refine the Collection. Previously works had been sold because the style or subject of the work was unsuitable or the work was difficult to place or was surplus. We now have a strategic disposal policy to sell a number of high value items which fall outside the main focus of the Collection in order to create a fund to finance future acquisitions. This policy is being implemented: we recently sold at Sotheby's two pictures by Antonio Joli which raised world record prices and produced over 1.5 million pounds sterling to support the Collection. Linked to the disposals is a clear acquisitions programme. The main thrust is to build on existing areas of strength, namely post war British art and works by younger emerging artists which we consider of interest. We will extend the Collection through acquisitions of both traditional modes of expression and more contemporary developments. Since 1996 we have strengthened our representation of British abstraction by a number of significant acquisitions of younger British artists working in an abstract style. These include Mark Francis, Jason Martin, Callum Innes and Antoni Malinowski. Innes, who was shortlisted for the 1995 Tate Gallery Turner Prize, is represented by 'Exposed Painting, Cadmium Orange', 1996. Innes starts with a monochrome ground which he paints onto the canvas and then uses a brush soaked in terpentine to remove the colour he previously applied. His working practice has been described as 'deliberately accidental'. Antoni Malinowski who was born in Warsaw and has lived and worked in London since 1980 is represented by 'Towards Darkness in White', 1993. This is typical of his work in the 'all-over' composition of small, precise, flickering marks. He is interested in Eastern philosophy and meditation and as such his images evolve slowly and are concerned with the idea of stasis. In addition to painting we are also looking to acquire more photographic works and to building a collection of sculpture and sculptors' drawings.

Activities of the Collection which involve public relations and advertising.
Traditionally, the Collection was confined to 'private' offices and executive rooms or corridors. What has transformed our ability to show the Collection is that in February 1997 NatWest opened the Lothbury Gallery, at the Group's head-office, in the City of London. The ground floor of the building was originally a vast banking hall. This was no longer needed for banking as branches had been rationalised in the City. The executive of the Bank agreed to a major refurbish-ment programme. Working to a brief in which we sough professional advice on gallery design, we have now provided a gallery space with oak stripped floor and a simple post and screen display system, which is both sympathetic and appropriate for the display of the art collection. The new gallery has given us a unique opportunity to share the Collection. It is open to the public and admission is free. Lord Alexander, the Chairman of NatWest Group, enthusiastically backed the idea. He has stated: 'We accept that business does not have an automatic right to exist. It requires and needs the approval of all its stakeholders - not just shareholders, but staff, customers, suppliers and the wider community - they cannot be separated. Without that licence to operate business cannot flourish. We must work with the community because we are an essential part of it'. We believe that in this support we are not only encouraging artists but by opening up the building and showing the paintings we are involving the community. On a recent Saturday nearly 2,000 people visited the gallery, which also houses a small banking museum.

We insist on very high standards. The space and the display surpasses that of many public galleries. The central aim is to show changing displays from the Group's permanent Collection. The first Collection display titled, 'The Subjects of Art' focused on the four subjects of art, namely still-life, the figure, landscape and abstraction. Our next permanent collection display, 'Portraits of Places' will open in February 1998 and will explore the ways in which artists have depicted the landscape. In order to maintain the level of interest in the Gallery from the local community and beyond we have planned a programme of loan exhibitions. In November 1997 we will be mounting 'London: The New Millennium' an exhibition of some thirty of the major architectural projects for London over the Millennium period. The exhibition has been selected to reflect the diversity and range of the planned developments from the large scale leisure projects at Battersea Power
Station and Tate Gallery Bankside to the less publicised redevelopment of the Sadler's Wells Theatre and Wallace Collection. To promote the Collection we have linked exhibitions to a series of educational activities. We hold gallery talks and lectures. We have hosted a national debate on contemporary art patronage co-ordinated by the National Artists Association. During 1998 we will build on these events by working with local schools and other art organisations with established education programmes, such as Camden Arts Centre and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. And, very importantly, we can now use the Gallery to display the work of the finalists in a major open art competition: the NatWest Art Prize. This is Britain's largest art prize with awards totalling 36,000 pounds sterling. The Prize is open to artists aged 35 years and under who are living, working or studying in Britain, and has been running since 1990. The competition encourages creative innovation and technical skills in composition, drawing and use of colour and is intended to reward artistic excellence. The first Prize is awarded for an outstanding group of five works and there are ten prizes for highly commended entries. Through the Prize we aim to support younger artists and to widen the interest in British contemporary art. The 1998 jury will comprise Stephen Buckley, artist and Professor of Fine Art, University of Reading; Richard Cork, art historian and art critic of the 'Times'; Anthony Mould, a dealer; Andrea Rose, head of the visual Arts Department at the British Council and myself. An exhibition of the eleven finalists' work will be held in the Lothbury Gallery in the summer of 1998. The first part of the selection process is based on slide submissions. We received over 700 entries in 1997. From the initial submission 40 entries, comprising 5 works each, some 200 works were brought in for consideration and eleven finalist selected. The overall winner was chosen prior to the award ceremony in June. The 1997 winner was Max Mosscrop. He first studied architecture at the University of Liverpool where he won the John Ruskin Prize for Architectu-re in 1984. He then went to study fine art at the Royal Academy Schools in London gaining a Silver Medal in 1996. This combination of art and architecture is reflected in his work. A central aspect of the Prize is the links with marketing opportunities. This ranges from the publicity material for the competition: the advertisements for the prize, the poster and entry forms to the information associated with the exhibition both at a national and local level. There are press advertisements and promotional postcards. In 1997 a special scheme to promote savings and investments products to NatWest customers was connected to the Art Prize. The winner of which was able to chose one of the finalists' works of art. An evaluation of the promotion showed that 70% of NatWest Customers approved of the Group's sponsorship of the arts. Images of the finalists works have also been used in a special campaign directed at university students. Art is now part of our thinking. The Art Collection has agreed a joint sponsorship project with Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation of an installation piece by the American artist, Dan Graham to be held in the Lothbury Gallery in May 1998. This project will be managed with an integrated education programme and a series of corporate hospitality events. Both the opening of the Gallery and the Award Ceremony for the 1997 Art Prize provided unique corporate hospitality opportunities which brought together guests from Arts, Business, politics and NatWest. These types of functions will be further developed. Thus the future development of the NatWest Group Art Collection, its acquisitions and disposal policy and all its related activities will be closely linked to the Lothbury Gallery. The Gallery has created a wonderful context for the Group's sponsorhip of art. It demonstrates that business and art can relate to the benefit of the company, the community, the customers, the staff and the artists.

I will finish with a picture which we acquired for the opening of the new gallery, Albert Irvin's 'San Giorgio', 1995. It is one of a major series of three works Irvin made in 1995. Of the other two, one was purchased by the Tate Gallery, London and the other by the Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Irvin's paintings are characterised by an expansive scale, vigorous and gesturally applied paint and exuberant colour. The central subject of Irvin's work is 'the experience of being in the world'. Irvin regards the space of his paintings and the steps taken in their execution as metaphors for real space and to events in life. I have chosen to end with this painting because the spirit of celebration which is central to Irvin's work seems to me to be appropriate to the close links which NatWest has forged with art and to the bank's aspirations for the future.

Maake een keuze uit de volgende sprekers:

Erik Hermida, Onderneming & Kunst
Dirk Noordman, Organisatieadviseur
Sacha Tanja, ING Groep
Rosemary Harris, NatWest Group
Grazia Quaroni, Fondation Cartier
Maria de Corral, Fundación "La Caixa"
Paul Mertz, Communicatieadviseur