Banking on Art

Many art institutions these days are reaching out for support to financial services companies. Most of the time, the support these companies provide is monetary. The Park Avenue Bank, however, is offering something else: real estate.Last fall, when the bank opened its first retail branch in Manhattan, at 350 Park Ave., it opened a small — 475-square-foot — art gallery within its space to show exhibitions on loan from museums. The bank’s first show was a selection of works from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Conn. The second, opening tomorrow, is an exhibition of 10 Andy Warhol prints from the Jewish Museum — portraits of famous 20th century Jews including Albert Einstein, the Marx Brothers, and Gertrude Stein. Other museums lined up to participate include the Rubin Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine., the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell.Art and commerce frequently intermingle in New York. Many companies have their own art collections, and some landlords introduce large-scale artworks into corporate spaces, as Aby Rosen has done at Lever House and the Seagram Building. Still, this collaboration is unusual.The gallery, which the bank has dubbed “Meet a Museum,” was the brainchild of Martin Mullin, now its director, and his partner, Martin Fisher, who is a real estate consultant to the bank. (Mr. Mullin has been in the museum world for 25 years and previously worked at the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation.) Messrs. Mullin and Fisher proposed the project to the bank’s president, Charles Antonucci, who was enthusiastic.For the bank, the benefits are relatively simple: The gallery offers a gracious space to entertain clients and an introduction to potential new clients among the board members of participating museums, who are invited to the opening party. “We use [the gallery] for receptions for clients,” Mr. Antonucci said. “Ideally, we’d have four or five parties per exhibit.” Since the gallery is open to the public during banking hours, it is also a way of doing something for the local community. So far, many people have visited the gallery from within the building or from nearby buildings, and Mr. Mullin said he plans to expand the outreach to the neighborhood. For the Warhol exhibit, he plans to organize lunchtime talks in the gallery.Mr. Mullin made sure the gallery’s designers followed the American Association of Museum’s specifications regarding things like lighting and vermin control. For each show, curators at the museum choose the wall color. The bank and the museum share the cost of shipping and insurance. The bank already has security systems, of course, including more than a dozen surveillance cameras. When the bank closes, a wall slides out to close off the gallery.For a museum, the chance to advertise to both people walking by and clients coming into the bank is the prime motivation to participate in the program. “The way Martin has created ‘Meet a Museum’ is to put the emphasis on the institution,” the spokeswoman for the Wadsworth Atheneum, Susan Hood, said. Two LED screens within the bank and one next to the ATM machines and visible from the street show a looping video about the museum and its collection.“It’s fabulous exposure for the Farnsworth,” the director of that museum, Lora Urbanelli, said. “We have a lot of folks in New York who make the trek up in the summer, and [this allows] us to keep in touch with our friends over the winter.”As for the Jewish Museum, “We have a push on at the moment to expand our horizons a bit and move ourselves beyond our wonderful Warburg Mansion on 92nd Street,” the deputy director for program, Ruth Beesch, said. “Some people perceive us more as a history and heritage museum,” she said. “We get confused with the Museum of Jewish Heritage downtown.”The Warhol prints, a recent gift to the museum from Lorraine and Martin Beitler, seemed like something that would “spark the attention of the audience that the bank is trying to reach,” Ms. Beesch said. The series was conceived by the art dealer Ronald Feldman and executed by the artist in 1980; they were exhibited at the Jewish Museum the same year. They will be part of a Warhol exhibit at the museum in 2008. The full list of subjects includes Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Brandeis, Martin Buber, Golda Meir, George Gershwin, and Franz Kafka.

Banking on Art

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