Artwork Leaves The Gallery Behind
A massive Anish Kapoor sculpture integrated into the base of a building in New York. Custom works by Robert Indiana and Olafur Eliasson featured at a condominium opening next year in Miami. And three artistic takes on the traditional scale model by the kinetic sculptor Es Devlin, which take up prime space in the sales gallery for the XI, a residential tower in New York.
All are examples of artists trading the white-box space of galleries for upscale commercial and residential real estate projects, an idea that might have been considered “selling out” a generation ago.
“The gallery is a format that is struggling,” said the Argentine curator Ximena Caminos, formerly of the Malba museum in Buenos Aires and now chief creative officer of the Honey Lab cultural space in Miami’s Blue Heron hotel and residential project now under development. “It’s transactional; the artist doesn’t have that much creative freedom, and there is a lot of pressure to make money in a short period of time.”
After the global financial crisis, when traditional sources of cultural funding were scaled back, corporate and individual donors stepped in to fill the void, according to Jennie Lamensdorf, who runs the Art-in-Buildings program for Time Equities, a commercial property developer based in New York. At first, well- established artists like Jeff Koons were commissioned to create pieces for condominiums in art hubs like Miami and New York.
Less than a decade on, even ear- ly and midcareer artists are being lured by developers to make art for public view.
Ms. Lamensdorf recently asked t he abstract painter Claudia Chaseling to produce a permanent piece for the lobby of her company’s building. Ms. Chaseling, who is German, said she took on the “unusual challenge” with relish.
“In galleries, people come to see art; in public buildings you have a lot of passers-by who have no clue about art — and I am all for as many people seeing my work as possible, and for everyone having their own perspective on it,” she said.
Her “Radiationscape,” a response to a nuclear power plant, drips from a wall onto the lobby floor. “I don’t consider my work with developers as compromising my artistic integrity at all,” she added.
The Lever House in New York, owned by Aby Rosen, was an early adopter of bringing large- scale artworks into the public sphere, and the midcentury building has become a de facto walk-by museum for the lunch crowd.
The artist Rachel Feinstein, whom Mr. Rosen commissioned to do a large mirror painting for an- other building, said she appreciated the front-and- center placement her “Panorama of New York” would receive.
“About a billion people will see it — more people than a museum — with a much wider variety,” Ms. Feinstein said.
Cidade Matarazzo, a residential development in São Paulo, Brazil, that also includes a hotel and other commercial buildings, is built around a “house of creativity,” a space for artists in residence.
Alexandre Allard, the developer, hopes that 30 million people will visit his complex each year and walk away astonished. “I believe Matarazzo is the model of the sustainable museum of the future,” he said.
Ultimately, Erica Samuels, who has curated projects such as the lobby of Extell’s One57 in New York, said galleries are still a place of prestige, but she thought of this as a new way to build the perfect triumvirate.
“A smart developer hires a great architect, who needs a great interior designer, who needs a great artist,” Ms. Samuels explained. “Taken together, you can bring out the best gestalt of a space.”