Bank Art: A Substantial Withdrawal : Minneapolis Firm to Break Up Renowned Contemporary Art Collection

A major Minneapolis bank that owns one of the most daring and avant-garde corporate contemporary art collections in the United States has decided to sell off hundreds of its most provocative pieces and dismantle “Controversy Corridor,” a hallway reserved for especially challenging or disturbing works.

The decision by First Bank System Inc. is to take effect by the end of the year. The last reception for Controversy Corridor was scheduled for Friday evening, with the hallway of art to be taken down later this month, but the bank has not made a public announcement of the closure in Minneapolis, where even some art gallery officials were unaware of the decision.

An auction house will be retained to sell off as much as 25% of the bank’s 3,200 pieces of art. Scheduled for the auction block sometime next year, bank officials say, are works by such artists as Barbara Kruger, Jonathan Borofsky, Joel Peter Witkin, Robert Longo, Thierry Cheverney, Doug Argue, Georg Baselitz, Cindy Sherman and Francesco Clemente.

Gone will be the heart of a program that once produced, as an official publication, something billed as First Bank System’s official art “manifesto.”

“We are involved with some of the most provocative artists working today,” the manifesto declared, “because we believe that only through active engagement with innovative, critical cultural practices can we progress as an organization and a community in the flux of a changing world.”

The strategy to liquidate much of the collection is intended, said Chris Mahai, First Bank’s vice president for corporate relations, to open the way for a cultural retrenchment at the bank. Bank employees questioned by The Times said management officials have said First Bank’s art collection is to be characterized from now on by “harmony” and “unity.”

The plan to sell off much of the collection follows by several months the departure of First Bank’s former chief executive officer, Dennis Evans, who was displaced when First Bank began to suffer major financial reverses. In recent months, First Bank has laid off about 4,000 employees.

Evans, an avid art collector, originated the program 10 years ago. DeWalt Ankeny, the acting chairman who has ordered the dismantling, is not seen as likely to take over as CEO.

The bank’s refocused collection will be a stark contrast to a corporate art program that once hung a series of Andy Warhol silkscreens of Mao Zedong in the lobby of bank branches in Milwaukee and Edwina, Minn., and left the exhibit up over protests by American Legion posts.

Then the bank commissioned Vince Leo, a Minneapolis photographer, to develop an illustrated, spiral-bound book detailing the controversy. The book traced parallels between First Bank’s history--particularly its accumulation of capital and politically controversial business activities--and Mao’s life.

In all, said Lane Relyea, editor of Artpaper, a monthly publication based in Minneapolis, First Bank’s program has been one that “does the opposite of what you’d think a corporate collection would do.”

“I think there is the sense that we want to change the mix of art so it is more inviting and comfortable,” said First Bank’s Mahai. “We are focusing more on the consumer market and service side (of the banking industry). There is the sense that we want art that is consistent with that image.

“The old art program had a specific mission, which was to broaden people’s perspective and creative thinking through art. Current management is going to a more conservative orientation, and wants the art program to follow that.”

“The hallmark of (the earlier) program was a kind of intellectual clarity and a sense of a corporation being adventuresome,” said Richard Andrews, director of the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle and a national authority on public art. “Rather than falling into the kind of normal complacency of most corporate art collections, it has really stood out.”

Lynne Sowder, curator and director of First Bank’s visual arts division, said the program began when Evans instituted an aggressive art purchasing campaign. In time, art was displayed in every one of First Bank’s 125 branches throughout the upper Midwest and extensively in the Minneapolis headquarters.

Among the most striking elements of the First Bank collection were artworks housed in its Controversy Corridor--a hallway in the bank’s headquarters accessible to employees and some customers. The corridor was begun as a place to which art was taken if it drew overwhelmingly negative reaction after being initially hung in employee work areas.

“The bank is dismantling all of this work, categorically,” Sowder said. She said she will probably leave the bank next year. “There will be nothing left,” she said. “I think it’s a most unfortunate moment.

“I think there may be a real failure on the company’s part to understand the consequences of this act. The bank’s problems as a business are undoubtedly not unconnected to its difficulty in embracing new ways of thinking.”

Controversy Corridor has included work by such artists as Robert Motherwell, Bruce Charlesworth and Andy Warhol. Within the last year, it included an image by photographer Andres Serrano whose picture of a crucifix immersed in urine provoked a storm of controversy in Congress earlier this year. The Serrano work on Controversy Corridor was another in his series of urine-related images.

In 1985, Sowder said, bank officials became concerned about increasing employee resentment. Bank workers, Sowder said, complained that they were not given a voice in art decisions and were forced to work near art they detested. Sowder said vigilante actions like putting plants in front of artworks or knocking them askew were common.

“It became clear that people needed a way to free themselves of this deeply-bound hostility,” Sowder said. To address the problem, Sowder said bank art officials began an elaborate communication program, encouraging venting of feelings about individual works.

The feedback has continued. One questionnaire response said of the Serrano photograph, for instance: “Our staff from senior management to clerical find this artwork in poor taste and totally unacceptable.”

At the same time, an arts education program was begun, Sowder said, “to try to get people to understand the special language of art. What we had never addressed was art’s symbolic role in this organization.”

Employee participation programs like “You Be the Curator” were begun. And some employees were involved in decisions on purchases of new art and the commissioning of original works. Gradually, Sowder said, bank workers began to develop more analytical perceptions.

The art collection has apparently performed well by measurements common to investment banking. The total purchase price of the collection, bank officials said, is about $5 million. The art is currently insured for about $10 million. However, the insured values of art collections often understates their actual market worth exponentially.

Nevertheless, the final decision, reached within the last few weeks, stunned many experts. Word of the bank’s plan was greeted with disappointment and concern at arts centers and corporate art programs across the country, officials of which unanimously described First Bank’s Division of Visual Arts as a model of effective corporate art programs designed to expand the intellectual horizons of employees and customers.

Some observers contended that the First Bank move has broader political implications and that it may be related to a trend toward imposing more conservative values on the arts. Howard Fox, curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Art Museum, for instance, said the bank’s cultural retrenchment may be a product of the same political dynamic that produced this year’s controversy over the content of work funded by the federal government’s National Endowment for the Arts.

“If it is true that the bank has made this decision, then it may be an unfortunate reflection on the climate that has been pumped up with political bellows in recent months,” said Fox. “That (First Bank) program was legendary and well respected.”

First Bank’s collection “was unique in a corporate setting,” said Tressa Miller, vice president and director of cultural affairs of Security Pacific Corp., which has a huge collection of its own--more than 12,000 pieces. “We were all sort of watching with awe to see what would happen. (The First Bank decision) takes from our midst a very aggressive collection that was brought to a general public. It’s a shame.”

Mahai said business reverses suffered by First Bank and a related change in top corporate management necessitated the decision. In 1988, the bank reported a $507 million loss and is pursuing a fallback strategy in which all of its businesses outside a core of consumer banking services focused on the Midwest are being abandoned.

“I think that they’re doing a lot of gruesome restructuring,” said Artpaper editor Relyea, “and this (plan to refocus the art program) isn’t nearly as diabolical as some of their other decisions.”