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| Best Practices: Banker's Agenda |
Art and Commerce
Regan Good
10/01/2004
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At the top of the wide, curved staircase leading to JP Morgan Private Bank’s
offices in Midtown Manhattan, three felt suits on simple wooden hangers hang in
a row against a white wall. For a moment, it looks as though three classic
commuter outfits from a John Cheever story have been dropped off from the dry
cleaners and hung temporarily on the landing. But these suits are by the German
artist Joseph Beuys, one of the artists included in JP Morgan’s world-famous
corporate art collection.
 Manuel Gonzalez, the firm’s global art expert,
delivers a tidy, impromptu lecture in front of each work. He knows the corporate
collection intimately, and he should—for 10 years he was its curator. Since
1998, however, he has focused on advising private banking clients on their
disparate art collections.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Gonzalez was at the
center of artistic activity in New York, working first as director of the
prestigious Holly Solomon Gallery and following that as codirector of the Sidney
Janis Gallery. Gonzalez knew the major artists of the day both professionally
and socially, giving him unique insight into the burgeoning art market, as well
as the aesthetic ideas behind its wares. He is known internationally as an
expert on mid-19th century and contemporary art. Though he works in a bank,
Gonzalez helps his clients much as any high-end art consultant would.
Considering the robust health of the contemporary art market, he finds himself
much in demand.
Full Service
Some private banks, looking increasingly like one-stop
shopping hubs, offer us access to art advisors as part of a value-added package.
But we must ascertain whether our collections are best served by bank-affiliated
advisors or independent consultants. Private art consultants say that banks’ art
advisory services have far too many clients to be able to offer comprehensive
services. They suggest that intangibles, such as art-world connections, deep
knowledge of the market and nuanced expertise, are only achieved after years of
study, experience and pavement pounding. What may surprise some private
consultants—and some collectors—is that the country’s leading private bank art
advisory services, at JP Morgan and Citigroup, are both headed by professionals
with years of art world experience.
Citigroup Private Bank has the
longest-standing art advisory service in the country—perhaps even the world;
European private banks have only recently established art advisory services.
Started in 1979 by New York art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, Citi’s organization and
its comprehensive scope subsequently served as a model for Christie’s and
Sotheby’s art advisory services. Besides the department’s prescient founding on
the eve of the 1980s art market boom, what gives Citigroup its true cache is
that its founders were, as one private advisor put it, “real” art people who
“knew what this kind of service should be.” (However, critics note that Deitch
returned to private art dealing in 1996, and see this as evidence that “real”
art people do not stay at banks.)
TOP VIEW
A number of private banks seek to be one-stop shops, offering advisory services
on topics well beyond their traditional ambit. In the first of a series on these
extramural consulting services, we examine the firms’ art advisory offerings.
Independent advisors often scoff that the banks cannot possibly have the
contacts, or devote the resources, to meet the needs of a world-class collector.
However, several firms do provide significant value, and those seeking
discretion and objectivity may find their work beneficial. |
Mary Hoeveler, current managing director of
Citigroup’s Art Advisory Service, is, like Deitch, a “real” art person. As a
senior vice president at Christie’s before joining Citigroup, she was able to
forge those crucial connections with dealers, museums and collectors. With three
other full-time art advisors and six contracted art consultants coming from
auction houses, galleries, museums and academia at her disposal, Hoeveler says
Citigroup has been able to influence some of the most important private
collections in the country. The department offers services from cataloging to
art purchasing to philanthropic and legacy planning, and employs a full-time
collections manager, who advises clients on the maintenance, preservation and
documentation of their collections.
Despite the pedigrees of some bank art
consultants, private art dealers are skeptical. Abigail Asher of Guggenheim
Asher Associates, an art consultancy firm with offices in Los Angeles and New
York, does not believe advisors within banks can wield the kind of influence
needed to achieve access to important pieces, something that high-end collectors
demand. “A high-profile art advisor is an introduction of power. You are someone
dealers have dealt with again and again and again. They know that you have
buying power behind you. They will come to you with pieces; they will look out
for you. You need to look at a tremendous amount of art for a very long time,
and know a lot of information and people before you can be
effective.”
Another well-known art advisor, Thea Westreich, the organizing
principal behind many important contemporary art collections, doubts that any
bank art advisory can focus on client needs the way she can. Thea Westreich Art
Advisory Services in Manhattan has seven full-time employees, as well as two
contracted independent curators. The firm currently carries only about 14
clients at a time. “I don’t mean to overstate things, but my business is in a
class of its own,” Westreich asserts. “An art advisor should have no other
interests than you. That’s the key. The private banks are just overextended;
they can’t go as in depth as we can, because they have far too many clients.”
She adds: “Money doesn’t get you all you want in the art world.”
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