Financing Art

UOB, UBS, OCBC, and Bank of America are some financial institutions involved heavily in today's art world. Why is this the case?

- REENA DEVI

The banking industry and art have historically co-dependent, enmeshed relationships. This has been the case from the time of the Medicis during the Renaissance to the East India Company supporting Rembrandt in putting up his paintings as fiscal collateral to modern banks playing a major role in the contemporary art world since the 1950s.

The globally established Swiss bank, UBS, has been collecting contemporary art since the 1960s. Mary Rozell, global head of the UBS Art Collection and the author of The Art Collector's Handbook, said, "The UBS Art Collection is widely recognised as one of the most important corporate collections of contemporary art in the world, with more than 30,000 works, including paintings, works on paper, photography, sculpture, video, and installations by emerging talents and established artists."

The bank has acquired works by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vija Celmins, Lucian Freud, Andreas Gursky, Mary Heilmann, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Wayne Thiebaud, Cy Twombly, and Christopher Wool.

GIVING A BOOST

UBS is not alone in its art collecting. Bank of America (BofA) has a collection of 50,000 artworks. Closer to home, the United Overseas Bank (UOB), which started collecting art in the early 1970s, now owns more than 2,600 artworks.

Speaking with The Peak, Christine Ip, head of group strategic communications and brand, UOB, said, “The bank began collecting artworks for two reasons: The first as a way to reach out to and support the fledgling local art scene, and the second, to acquire quality artworks by local artists that would be displayed within UOB’s new office building located in Bonham Street.”