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Art and commerce

By Emily Hulme | ehulme@am-ny.com

February 18, 2008

Finance and art have gone together since the days of the Medicis and Michelangelo. And to this day, though they're quieter about it, financial institutions are still very active in the art acquisition game.

The Park Avenue Bank has recently expanded its program of patronage to include a pedagogical angle with its "Meet a Museum" series, in which the bank exhibits a series of works from museums from around the world. We spoke with series curator Martin Mullen.

Where did the idea come from? It grew out of the bank having some extra space and asking what would they do with it. So the suggestion was that they have something more to do with the arts than they [already had], in that case have a gallery.

How do you put these shows together? I go to the museum directors and the curators, and I lay out a broad plan of what we would like. I know their collections; I worked with museums and the museum world for 30 years. I'm an artist myself and an art historian, and I know the museums; I know the people in them and their collections. I like to go for icons, because we really only strike the public for a few minutes.

Who's your intended audience? You know people that might intend to go to the museum and never quite get there? ... So this is really just an opportunity for people in midtown to pop in for a few minutes. They might be taking a break from their desks or [be on] their lunch break or coming to do some banking, and they come in and spend a few minutes looking at George Washington or J. Pierpont Morgan's collection or Andy Warhol or whatever and they get a little encounter with art.

What are you hoping people come away with from this current exhibit? That they will know Gerardo Rueda. He is somebody who worked in Spain in the middle half of the 20th century and at that time, of course, Spain was shut down from the outside world, [ Francisco] Franco keeping everything contained. So this illustrates how somebody working in a closed country managed to get the zeitgeist and get to know what was going on outside of his own confines and outside his own country and worked in a constructivist way. So, shutting down a country doesn't necessarily mean that you can shut down all the feelings and spirits and threads that are already running in the country when you try to isolate it.

"Meet a Museum" at the Park Avenue Bank. Currently on view: Gerardo Rueda: Constructions 1949-1996 Collages and drawings from the collection of the Fundacion Gerardo Rueda/Museo Gerard Rueda, Madrid Through April 11 Mon-Wed, Fri 8am-4pm; Thu 8am-6pm 350 Park Ave, between 51st and 52nd sts (6, E, V to 51st St-Lexington Ave) 212-220-0878 parkavenuebank.com

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Art and commerce

Related topic galleries: Andy Warhol, Francisco Franco, Arts

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