Thinking about taking your corporate art collection on tour?
Touring your corporate art exhibit takes time and resources, but there are great benefits to putting your corporate art collection on the road.
There are two great reasons for touring your collection. For one, it can create and promote a strong work culture. And, your art collection can be used as a brand ambassador—sharing your corporation with the world in a different light.
Your corporate art collection can be a cultural ambassador, bringing a consistent perspective and aesthetic from space to space.
Often, corporate offices with several worldwide locations have to nurture and maintain a healthy work culture. Internally, it’s important that each office maintain an individual personality while still being part of the larger corporate identity.
Margaret LeMay, of Integrated Art Group, speaks to the value of sharing an art collection across offices:
“it is a great way to utilize resources by giving a fresh perspective when viewed in a different location, it also gives all employees a chance to see new and different artworks in the collection.”
A corporation with an established collection can also use its art as an international brand ambassador.
You can showcase your brand and commitment to a medium, subject matter, or artists through series of exhibitions in museums or other office locations. Work with institutions that align with your client base or audience to enforce your brand and messaging. And here's a tip: consider working with an educational institute to gain recognition from a recruiting base.
Here are a few things to consider if you're planning on touring your corporate art collection.
Your first priority should be finding a reputable art handler.
Whenever a piece of art transitions to a new location, the thing that should be top of mind is the health and care of the artwork. Make sure you have a safe and secure transportation method, starting with the proper packaging.
Develop an exhibition plan for the next location, ensuring that the artwork will be installed correctly in the new location.
Consider hiring an art handler to manage the process from one location to another or build a relationship with an established fine art shipping and storage company.
Then, remember to avoid "blank wall syndrome".
Once you take the collection off the walls, make sure to avoid a blank wall by having a permanent or temporary replacement plan.
If your corporate art collection is extensive enough, pull a piece out of storage to fill the gaps. Filling the wall with artwork already in the corporate collection is an excellent use of your available resources and an opportunity to evaluate the full collection. Your collection manager should have an inventory on a cloud-based platform like Artwork Archive, which will make assessing the collection a simple task.
Consider tapping your internal talent pool and offering the wall space to your employees for the duration. It’s not uncommon to find that someone already within your organization is a weekend artist or a hobby collector.
Showcase your corporate culture by curating an exhibition with the color study by Judy in accounting and the landscape by Dave in human resources. If there are too many to choose from, consider having the company as a whole vote or form an art committee that will take the burden off of you.
Consider art rentals as an alternative.
Some corporate art consultants have started offering art rentals. Somewhere between an exhibition and an investment, companies like Artemus and Turning Art provide a wide variety of services to provide you with short or long-term rentals.
A short-term rental of a few pieces costs a fraction of what it would cost to replace a permanent collection piece. And, art rental companies offer curation services that ensure that the rental will fit with your overall corporate art collection and aesthetic.
Keep track of the details.
If something happens to a piece in your corporate art collection (Knock on wood ) while it’s on the road, it’s helpful to have an up-to-date inventory of all the pieces in your collection.
With art collection software like Artwork Archive, you can keep all your relevant documents (insurance, appraisal, photographs) and a list of emergency numbers (insurance broker, conservator, storage facility) as well as keep track of where each piece in the collection is currently showing. Having this information in the cloud means you have access whenever you need it—from anywhere in the world.
Evaluate the impact of your touring collection
You’ve embarked on an exciting adventure to achieve a purpose, whether it was branding awareness or cultural standing. The only way to know if you’ve reached your goal is to examine the data.
Gather as much data as you can on the experience of the traveling exhibition. Send a survey to the employees, have your executives casually ask clients who make regular trips to the office, or gather attendance numbers from museums or institutions.
Artwork Archive offers the tools you need to organize your growing corporate art collection.
