Corporate Patronage of Art and Architecture in the United States, Late 19th Century to the Present

More than just a necessary corrective to the prevailing scholarly inattention to the private sector’s consumption of the visual arts, Corporate Patronage of Art & Architecture in the United States demonstrates how extensively the histories of art and commerce interlace. Brimming with archival gems, fresh interpretations, and new interpretive frameworks, this collection of essays by fourteen authors examines artistic commissions of remarkable variety and complexity, both in terms of their underlying motives and their outward manifestations: hospital architecture, installations for office buildings, banks, and ocean liners, department store displays, furniture design, magazine advertisements, contemporary sportswear, and even the very materials from which art is made. Often circulating beyond the white cube of the museum, these collaborations between cultural producers and business enterprise, moreover, represented most Americans' first or primary exposure to modern art, design, and architecture. This volume will not only encourage business historians to take corporate visual culture more seriously but also urge art historians to reconsider the facile distinctions between commercial culture and the avant-garde that have shaped the field. * John Ott, Professor of Art History, James Madison University, USA *
Writing in 1927, the American advertising executive Earnest Elmo Calkins declared that “beauty [is] the new business tool.” This anthology re-considers the modern alliance between art and industry that laid the foundation for the ubiquitous corporate sponsorship of our own time. Calkins would have approved, thankful for this new history of beauty and business. * Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society, University of Leeds, UK *