Letter to the Bank #25

Dear Mr. Manager!

What’s this I hear? Can it be true? Have you really broken into the business of curating blockbuster shows of blue chip Art? (See previous post). Honestly I didn’t know you had it in you but as they say: All is fair in love and war. If I feel I can dole out financial advice then why shouldn’t you be a curator? Still this does bring up some interesting issues. It is one thing to have work you own included in a show but it is quite another to mould whole traveling shows around the work you own and all whilst bumping my interest rates up and up and up—all no doubt to help defray the cost of mounting such enormous shows. I guess you’ll worry about paying back your government loans later. Anyway my main point is this: Shouldn’t I have a say in the kind of shows you curate? Am I not, in theory, a shareholder?

So here is what I propose: I shall become one of your curators. I’ll pitch a few of the wonderful ideas I have for shows (some of which admittedly could be construed as slightly anti-corporate) and you can tell me if you are interested. Remember I am not anti YOU. You are my BM! I am “with you” so to speak. You are my bank and I am your loyal customer.

I do have some remaining questions though. Who chose all the art you’ve collected? Did you my bank, my struggling bank, go out and buy this stuff? Isn’t that awfully extravagant of you? Doesn’t that amount to somewhat irresponsible behavior given the current financial crisis we are all confronting? Or is this an alternative investment strategy? That I can appreciate. Why waste your money on toxic assets when you can buy Art? Or did you never intend to collect art in the first place? Did it arrive willy-nilly—one lien here, another bankruptcy there—until suddenly one day you realized you had an amazing collection of seized collateral? This is a topic that interests me greatly. When not piling my own freely offered collateral on your doorstep I am also out there trying to interest people in my art. I occasionally even sell a piece or two, which gives me quite a buzz. I even tried to interest your bank in my work a while back. I tried selling my art to you but that didn’t work so how about accepting my art as collateral. I suspect you’d prefer it if genuine artworks piled up in your basement rather than old washing machines and other sundry (unwanted) old possessions. Not only would this help me if you bought or accepted as collateral my artwork. It would also provide a boost to your collection. It would boost it no end, well, maybe not boost it so much as round it out a bit. I am offering you, my bank, a chance to get in on the Living Artists’ Support Network, or The Artists’ Collateral Order Network (TACON is a better acronym but none of this is final yet). You’d in effect be underwriting the future cultural wellbeing of your country. Some might call it gambling but I’d call it a sure fire bet. Instead of buying, or accepting as collateral, a hugely expensive Rosenquist painting, instead acquire tons of smaller artworks by hundreds of different, mostly unknown artists. The chances are with one of those artworks you may, one day, just hit the jackpot. Just when your bank is failing you’ll find you’ve been sitting on a jewel all this time, a jewel you didn’t fully appreciate at the time, a jewel so valuable it might just save your neck.

Yours sincerely,

KC

PS-The artists’ community is quite “hep” to the idea of bartering their artwork in exchange for debt reductions and so forth so do give this project some serious consideration. The ball is in your court.