Moreover, the collection has been built on a shoestring in art-world terms. Toby Lewis shares a modest office with her three employees. That's what a company collecting well-known living artists might pay for a small handful of paintings. The idea is that employees will be forced to abandon preconceptions and challenged to think in different ways. Art is everywhere in the public spaces of the company's sprawling headquarters, as well as in about 200 of the company's 350 branch offices around the country.
Employees have the right to have a work of their own choosing in their office.
Jan Dolohanty in the tax department chose Cerealism with Bowl , a colorful, childlike work by Rodney Alan Greenblat, because she loved another work called The Faithful Paperboy by the same artist in the hallway near her office. But in the public spaces, Lewis alone has control over what works hangs where. I don't expect everyone to love the art. But if they talk about it, and talk about ideas because of it, it's doing its job. The Bang controversy shows that philosophy in action.