Arts and Public Funding

An interesting thread has developed in the comments on a post of a few days ago but I thought I’d raise it again here (as blogs are not always the easiest platform for a ‘forum’ discussion).

I suggested that under previous governments I thought there had been tax incentives for corporate art collections and alibi had an idea that “there was a percent for art kind of scheme attached to new building projects in the eighties, where spending 1% of the project budget on art attracted tax benefits.”  and asked “anyone got any examples of quality artwork being produced via percent for art schemes in nz? a corporate collection that wasn’t interior decorating oriented?”

Well I know of the “BIG” collections (BNZ, Rutherford, Fletcher) of which my understanding is that they developed during this time as corporate tax write-offs but I did work in a building on The Terrace in Wellington for a long time that had some scary ’80s neon going on in the floor of the foyer which I hope wasn’t an ‘artwork’.

On a brief internet search I found this from a Christchurch Art Gallery exhibition in 2005 “Boom: Banking on Art in the 80s“. “The idea of art as investment exploded in the 1980s as bull markets and swift economic growth encouraged the century’s greatest corporate spending spree. It was a timely moment for the Bank of New Zealand to establish its collection” . I do wonder if this is only part of the story but at least some of these works are ‘getting around’ these days e.g. the Southland Museum and Art Galleryin Invercargill.

[and here I would insert an image of Billy Apple's "From the BNZ Art Collection"]

And this “Whipping the Wind,a neon sculpture by Paul Hartigan…fills 10 windows in a turret topping the podium of the Sybase Building on the corner of Lambton Quay and Ballance Street. The sculpture was originally installed in 1988…The building developer funded and installed  Whipping the Wind under the City Council’s Art Bonus scheme – in return the Council allowed the height of the building to be increased by two floors.”  Well that’s an interesting trade-off, but I gather quite a common one.

As you can see from this. “For most people, the phrase corporate art summons up images of permanently installed minimalist sculptures, such as the huge generic ball that was toppled from its perch in the movie Fight Club. Much of this kind of work is the result of “art percent” schemes, which were popular around the world in the mid to late 20th century and resulted in indifferent artworks being plonked into large marble voids begrudgingly set aside by architects so a developer could stretch planning regulations. Streamlined and solid enough to resist the most stringent of OSH requirements, these monolithic abstracts are hardly likely to disrupt the monolithic structures they occupy.“

Now I know there are one or two people who read this that may have some insights - so I hope they’ll share. In the meantime I will be checking out “Privatising culture : corporate art intervention since the 1980s” by Chin-Tao Wu tomorrow.

BTW - today someone suggested I get this shirt. I can think of a few situations where it might be useful :-)

 

BTW - wordpress has started adding stuff to the bottom of my posts (related blogs) I hate it

Tags: BNZ, corporate art, Hartigan