DENIS MAKSIMOV

Contemporary art collection: a visual representation of organisational philosophy and values

Peter Bialobrzeski, Shenzhen 1, 2001, courtesy of ING Art Collection 

Contemporary art as a language to express company’s values and philosophy can be a powerful tool, which has potential to facilitate conversion of an organisation into an institution. Modernity demands rethinking current capitalism model, which is obviously unsustainable. Michael Porter, the author of corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept and the head of Harvard Business School Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. recently offered a new vision on CSR - ‘a shared value’. ‘A shared value’ in it’s essence, suggests that the current organisational determination with NGO, business and political institutions representing ‘three sectors’ of society should be eliminated. At the moment each ‘sector’ has own goal: political institutions - redistribution, business - production, non-commercial and non-governmental sector - reflection, adaptation and socialisation. The challenges of today’s world, however, demand a common response from all the sectors. Their activities has to driven by shared agenda and shared understanding of responsibility. All of it is distilled in a term of ‘a shared value’, especially actual for corporations.

One of the questions that needs to be addressed is how to communicate values of the corporations in their external and internal communication, to their customers and partners and their staff. It is medium of corporate culture from one side and company’s reputation and image from another.

Leading companies, NGOs, expert institutions and universities in the world address the issue of constructing strong corporate culture for decades already. In our ever-speeding up world the task of keeping the most talented people inside the company becomes harder every day. How to reduce the risk of ‘brain and talent drain’ and increase ‘company patriotism’ among the most talented?

Markus Stuecklin/Keystone/AP Photo

Conversion of company from ‘an enterprise’ into ‘an institution’ is the way to achieve greater competitive advantages, alongside with aligning itself with the logic of ‘a shared value’. The company is not resonating the market it operates on, it is first and foremost the composition of talented, devoted people, who share the same philosophy and values, work for the same causes and purposes. They are ready to adapt to ever changing environment within the organisation and contribute to its goals and development to the maximum. It is realisation of ‘shared value’ concept.

How do you achieve this goal?

The possible answer is visualisation of company’s philosophy and values in the format of contemporary art collection. Contemporary art is not decorative, it’s value, philosophy and concept driven. It is not characterised by terms of style,  format, time, space, material, beauty or aesthetics. It became free of certain determination - ‘to define is to limit’ as Oscar Wilde said long before contemporary art period has started. Therefore contemporary art provides to corporations opportunity to shape visual representation of its  most essential resource - skilled, devoted, adaptable people, a team with high total factor productivity and high level of synergy in their work. Companies like Belgacom and ING are already active participants of contemporary art medium. It is important not to encapsulate them solemnly in the framework of ‘players of contemporary art market, investors and speculators’. Possibility of earning on the art market, what makes the visualisation of company’s philosophy an investment, provides obvious motivation for companies to pursue this format of realisation of ‘a shared value’ concept, as it provides opportunity not only to return the capital from this investment, but also to earn on it financially.

Contemporary art collection uplifts external reputation of the company: impressing partners, sponsors, creditors, etc. It is moving company’s credibility to the next level - institutional. The collection is reflecting institutional and reputational status of company as an institution with values towards employees, increasing their alignment and cementing their ‘belonging’ to the company. The direct consequence of that is decrease in level of skilled and especially valuable personnel turnover, the effect that is already in place in ING, for example. Contemporary art collection provides the basis for ‘immortalisation’ of the company.

Maastricht 12 March 2016, The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) - AXA Corporate Collections Symposium. Photo: TEFAF Maastricht, Harry Heuts

It is important to realise that contemporary art collecting is accessible for wide range of the companies, not only to major chips on the market. The yearly budget for expanding, sustaining and managing of the collection can range from hundreds of thousands to millions of euros, but a start can be as humble as several tens of thousands of the investment. Moreover, as it was mentioned before, it is indeed an investment, where smart strategy can bring a generous financial return, apart of the other benefits listed above. Involvement of the company in contemporary art, simply speaking, makes company ‘sexy’ - indeed, popularity of contemporary art and the attendance of the museum around the globe is growing exponentially over the last decade. There are a lot of versions offered by critics and theorists to explain this phenomenon - one of them is that contemporary art provides to people a free of censorship medium for self-reflection.

by Denis Maksimov and Harlan Levey

Harlan Levey and Denis Maksimov are working together as curatorial team to help companies, political institutions and expert organisations to work out their strategy of activities in contemporary art medium, including visualisation of values, collecting and management of the collection.