The Business of Art

The article entitled "Going hammer and tongs" appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on August 21, 2004. The piece can be accessed through the Herald's online archive and opens with a discussion of the pending Coles Myer art sale in the forthcoming months of 2004. Coles Myer opted to follow suit and auction their extensive collection that included notable works by Arthur Boyd, John Perceval and Fred Williams. The company had a long tradition of acquiring Australian masters and prior to the sell-off they had amassed a collection of some five hundred artworks. As with previous illustrious sales such as BHP Billiton(2003) and WMC(2004), the media seized on the event but voices of concern echoed within the Australian art scene. The article cites several comments made by the chairman of Macquarie Bank's art committee, Julian Beaumont in order to highlight the disparate corporate collecting philosophies that prevail. Beaumont does not speculate on the company's motivation for selling, rather he refers to the event as a 'tragedy' and offers the collecting strategy of Macquarie Bank as a corrective.
Beaumont endorses the presence of a corporate collection, noting that since Macquarie Bank's inception in 1985 they have continued to assemble a selection of contemporary works that reflect the investment bank's core corporate values. The collection has undoubtedly appreciated in value, Rosalie Gascoigne and Bill Robinson are no longer emerging artists and their artworks command higher prices at auction than when Macquarie Bank purchased them in the late 1980s. A corporate sell-off would realise a healthy profit at auction for Macquarie Bank but regardless Beaumont dismisses the idea since the collection was conceived not as an investment scheme but rather as an expression of the company's intrinsic values.
The Sydney Morning Herald's website produced a number of articles from its archives that were pertinent to my research. This particular editorial though was significantly longer and the presence of lengthy testimonies provided material for the latter section of this case study. Macquarie Bank's stance regarding corporate art collections is made explicit: the company does not intend to profiteer from their holdings and although shareholders may not receive a tangible return from the collection, the artworks inevitably enhance the corporation's image which is of paramount concern to both parties.