In many respects, Spain’s central bank was playing catch-up the minute it was founded in 1782—nearly 100 years after the Bank of England.
From another angle, though, Spain’s Banco de San Carlos, which subsequently became the Banco de España, was ahead of its time: It ranks as having one of the world’s first corporate art collections.
“The president of the Bank of Spain commissioned Francisco Goya to create six works of the bank’s directors,” says Banco de España curator Yolanda Romero. “One of the goals was to preserve the memory of the history of the bank through the portraits, and the other was to promote the art of its time.”
Gradually, the Banco de España was joined by a trickle of other financial institutions, which turned into a flood after World War II.
Today, banks are some of the most important art patrons in the world.
“Bankers stepped in like the new Medici,” says Arnold Witte, an associate professor in cultural policy at the University of Amsterdam, whose research focuses on corporate art collections. “From the 1950s onward, bankers needed to create a new and positive image for themselves, and I think bankers like [Chase Manhattan’s] David Rockefeller were really aware of the fact that they could use art to that end.”
Now, as pandemic-related shutdowns have entered their ninth month, and as public collections around the world dramatically scale back programming—if not the collections themselves—banks and other large corporations have continued to collect, lend, and exhibit art. By comparison, 1 in 3 American museums never reopened after shutting down in March, according to a survey released on Tuesday by the American Alliance of Museums.
Seventy-eight percent of the International Association of Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art (IACCCA)’s 56 members have continued to acquire art during Covid, says Loa Haagen Pictet, chair of the Geneva-based organization.
Only half of the organization’s members have cut their budgets; all of them, which include the Collection Société Générale, the European Central Bank Art Collection, and the UBS Art Collection, have sustained their arts programming.
“Banks certainly have a role as patrons,” Pictet says. “We’re facing a moment where public collections have very little means to collect and support artists.”