Corporate Patronage of Art and Architecture in the United States, Late 19th Century to the Present

Monica E. Jovanovich is Assistant Professor of Art History, Golden West College, USA.Melissa Renn is Collections Manager, HBS Art and Artifacts Collection, Harvard Business School, USA.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionBeyond the Commercial: Corporate Patronage ReconsideredMonica E. Jovanovich and Melissa RennPart I: Rethinking Corporate PatronageChapter 1: Corporate Patronage at the Crossroads: Situating Diego Rivera’s ‘Rockefeller Mural’ Then and NowMary K. CoffeyChapter 2: Maxfield Parrish’s Creative Machinery for TransportationJennifer A. GreenhillChapter 3: Connections and Conflicts: Margaret Bourke-White’s Corporate, Commercial, and Documentary PhotographyMark DurdenChapter 4: Incorporated Philanthropy: The General Education Board, Abraham Flexner, and the Architecture of American Medical Schools in the Early Twentieth CenturyKatherine L. CarrollPart II: From Tastemaking to Marketing: Corporate Patronage NetworksChapter 5: The Corporate Person as Art Collector: Andrew Mellon’s Capital and the Origins of the National Gallery of ArtSeth FemanChapter 6: ‘To live is to look and move forward’: Lord and Taylor’s 1928 Exposition of Modern Art and DesignElizabeth McGoeyChapter 7: Merchants, Manufacturers, and Museums: The Patronage Networks of Modern Design in the United States, 1930s–1950sMargaret Maile PettyChapter 8: Marketing Hawaii: Eugene F. Savage and the Matson Murals (1938–1940)Elizabeth B. HeuerPart III: Corporate Commissions as Branding and Public Relations Chapter 9: Civic Space and an Iconic Brand: Paradoxes of Corporate Patronage in the Carnegie Library PhenomenonDouglas KlahrChapter 10: Banking with Family in Postwar California: Howard Ahmanson, the Millard Sheets Studio, and the Home Savings and Loan Commissions, 1953–1991Adam ArensonChapter 11: Rusting Giant: U.S. Steel and the Promotional Material of SculptureAlex J. TaylorChapter 12: From Bank Lobbies to Sportswear: Julie Mehretu, Kehinde Wiley, and the Shift in Corporate Patronage in the Twenty-First CenturyDaniel HaxallBibliographyList of Contributors

More than just a necessary corrective to the prevailing scholarly inattention to the private sector’s consumption of the visual arts, Corporate Patronage of Art & Architecture in the United States demonstrates how extensively the histories of art and commerce interlace. Brimming with archival gems, fresh interpretations, and new interpretive frameworks, this collection of essays by fourteen authors examines artistic commissions of remarkable variety and complexity, both in terms of their underlying motives and their outward manifestations: hospital architecture, installations for office buildings, banks, and ocean liners, department store displays, furniture design, magazine advertisements, contemporary sportswear, and even the very materials from which art is made. Often circulating beyond the white cube of the museum, these collaborations between cultural producers and business enterprise, moreover, represented most Americans' first or primary exposure to modern art, design, and architecture. This volume will not only encourage business historians to take corporate visual culture more seriously but also urge art historians to reconsider the facile distinctions between commercial culture and the avant-garde that have shaped the field.