A Corporate Collection

Interior of a modern office or waiting area with a leather bench, a large window reflecting trees outside, and a lighted display or divider with purple lighting.

A company asked us to build the art collection for its executive headquarters. Over two years we did, floor by floor: Alex Prager, Angela Bulloch, Jeffrey Gibson, Jeppe Hein, Elizabeth Neel, Devan Shimoyama, Harold Cohen, Vivian Springford, Linda Lopez, and many more. All acquisitions, no commissions. We handled everything the program touched, from the fairs to the crates to the wall.

A corporate collection is the hardest kind to get right, because nobody chose to be in the room. A collector’s house is full of people who already care. A museum is full of people who came on purpose. An office is full of people who came for a meeting, and the art has to reach them anyway, on a Tuesday, when they’re thinking about something else. So the standard was work strong enough to interrupt a normal day and considered enough to hold after a thousand of them. Prager’s staged cinema beside Bulloch’s light. Gibson’s beadwork down the hall from a Harold Cohen made by a machine he taught to draw. Springford’s stained color. Lopez’s ceramic drips. A building of very different arguments, made to live together.

What happened next is why I do this. The building was already light-filled and beautiful. Now it had stories in it. The staff would stop me in the hallway to tell me that there were interesting things happening in the office, that they’d started looking, that they felt a renewed sense of purpose and care about the place they spent their days. It opened up the company’s world. They didn’t buy a collection. They bought a reason to look up.

The companies that will matter to a place are the ones that treat art as part of how they operate, not as something on the wall. This is what that looks like when someone with a real budget decides to mean it.

Interior of an art gallery or museum with abstract paintings on white walls, a glass coffee table with decorative objects, two wooden chairs with brown cushions, a red and black rug, and a wooden ceiling with skylights.
Green sculpture made of numerous small, elongated shapes, displayed on a black pedestal against a window with an outdoor scene of leafless trees and a parking lot.
A large abstract watercolor painting on a gallery wall featuring splashes of blue, green, brown, and black ink, with a prominent black textured silhouette on the right side.
Interior of a modern building with large glass windows, a stone fireplace, and contemporary furniture, including black leather sofas and a wooden coffee table, with leafless trees visible outside.
An office waiting area with a colorful abstract painting on the wall, gray sofa, marble side table, and office glass door.
A conference room with a long wooden table surrounded by white chairs, a large colorful abstract painting on the wall, and glass windows showing trees outside. The ceiling has fluorescent lighting.
Colorful wall art with geometric patterns and words: 'LET ME BE', 'WHO YOU NEED', 'ME TO BE'.
A framed photograph of a deep blue canyon with rocky formations and a body of water, mounted on a brick wall.
Interior of a dining area with white tables and wooden chairs, large colorful abstract artwork on the wall, and large windows letting in natural light.
A hallway with a painting on the wall between two elevator doors, one labeled accessible. The floor is dark and the ceiling has fluorescent lights and ventilation panels.
Office printing area with HP multi-function printer and a digital copier in front, a large framed artwork on the wall above depicting a woman and a dog in a colorful kitchen scene, scissors on a small side table, and a white cabinet with recycling and shredding services label.
An office waiting area with blue chairs, white tables, a large painting of a person in a blue shirt reading a book on a black background, and a glass partition.
Photo of an indoor space with a white wall display reading 'EVERYTHING CAN CHANGE' with a photograph of trees and water in the background, and a painting on the wall.