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　　在德意志银行明亮的伦敦总部大厅里立着一尊英国艺术家托尼-克拉格制作的雕像。这一名为“分泌物”的雕像看起来是一堆混乱的巨型人体器官，但仔细观察后它是由数千个骰子贴在一起而成的。在银行被批评是赌场的时候，来访者对德意志银行挂在附近墙壁上的一个解说牌上的文字感到意外。解说牌称，雕像里的骰子“可能会引发与银行业务性质的比较”。

　　解说牌的作者、德意志银行艺术顾问阿利斯泰尔-希克斯在谈及德意志银行的艺术项目时称：“我说，我们是颠覆性部门。我们对自己不是德意志银行品牌的平滑扩展而感到高兴。”

　　在发生金融危机之前的十年间，像希克斯这样的策展人利用银行的一些巨额赢利来使银行成为世界当代艺术品最大规模的收藏者。德意志银行的收藏品达5万多件艺术品，瑞银集团有35000件，荷兰国际集团银行拥有22500件，摩根大通拥有3万多件。与此形成对比的是，世界最为著名博物馆之一、巴黎的卢浮宫只拥有35000多件当代艺术品。报道称，高盛向埃塞俄比亚出生的艺术家朱莉-马赫瑞图支付了5百万美元以为其纽约市总部大厅创作一幅壁画。

　　只有很少的银行为了赚钱而收集艺术品，例如，破产投资银行雷曼兄弟9月29日在伦敦举行了艺术品拍卖会，艺术品拍出了260万美元。这一成绩并不差，但它对银行倒闭时所欠下的6.13亿美元债务是杯水车薪。

　　哥伦比亚大学教师学院艺术管理项目主任简-杰夫里称，艺术品可以带来体面和尊重。银行比任何时候都需要这两点。

　　Cultural Assets: Banks Stock Up on Art 

　　In the lobby of Deutsche Bank's polished, corporate-chic London headquarters stands a sculpture by British artist Tony Cragg. Called Secretions, the piece looks like a jumble of giant human organs, but closer inspection reveals it is a mosaic of thousands of dice glued together. At a time when banks are disparaged as casinos, visitors may be surprised to read the small placard hung by Deutsche Bank on an adjacent wall. The sculpture's dice, the placard says, "may provoke comparisons with the nature of the bank's business."

　　Its author, Deutsche Bank art adviser Alistair Hicks, who looks somewhat out of place in his crumpled blazer and mismatched trousers amid the sharp suits crossing the lobby, flashes a toothy grin. "I call us the subversive department," he says of the bank's art program, which is administered by him and six other advisers. "We are happy to not be just the smooth extension of Deutsche Bank branding."

　　In the decade before the financial meltdown, curators like Hicks used some of the banks' huge profits to make those institutions the world's largest holders of contemporary art. Deutsche Bank's collection consists of more than 50,000 pieces. UBS owns 35,000. Dutch bank ING houses 22,500, and JPMorgan Chase stores more than 30,000. By comparison, Paris' Louvre, the most famous museum in the world, has 35,000 works. Goldman Sachs reportedly paid $5 million for the Ethiopian-born artist Julie Mehretu to create a mural for the lobby of its New York City headquarters

　　Few banks collect art to make money. A liquidation auction of art from collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers in London on Sept. 29, for example, raised $2.6 million. Not bad, but it won't make a dent in the $613 billion in liabilities the bank had run up when it folded。

　　Art confers respectability and respect, according to Joan Jeffri, director of the arts-administration program at Columbia University's Teachers College, and banks need those more than ever. From the mighty Medici banking dynasty in Renaissance Florence to the giants of the 19th century, like John Pierpont Morgan, art has been used to project status and power。

　　You could argue that the banks have done a better job of acquiring art than they have of acquiring financial assets. What's more valuable: a Richard Diebenkorn painting or a toxic collateralized debt obligation? "The people responsible for managing these corporate collections have professionalized," Jeffri says. "Whereas it was once the wife of the CEO or some personal friend managing the CEO's interest in art, now banks have art departments and on-staff curators."

　　At Deutsche Bank, Hicks and his team manage collections in more than 900 buildings in 45 countries. Their department is a cottage industry in itself; they produce a bimonthly magazine, offer tours to employees and clients and, most crucially, patrol the globe for fresh and provocative new works. They periodically present their purchasing ideas to a committee of bankers, which has the final say on acquisitions。

　　That bankers, despite their fall from grace, still hold such a powerful place in the art world concerns some purists. The reason? When art becomes institutionalized, the line between prestige and corporate whitewash can become smudged. Jeffri points out that 30 years ago, when Big Tobacco was first coming under intense scrutiny over its lethal products, Philip Morris bulked up its art collection and began sponsoring exhibits under the slogan "It takes art to make a company great."

　　In 2006 several prominent British artists and critics knocked UBS and the Tate Modern after the bank exhibited corporate art at the publicly funded museum. Art that is displayed in museums becomes immediately more valuable, which prompted accusations of a conflict of interest. Conversely, Royal Bank of Scotland came under fire last year for not sharing its collection despite receiving a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout. Critics contended that the art was now publicly owned and therefore should be available for viewing。

　　Clearly, the inchoate criticism of banks' involvement in the arts is tied to a populist backlash in the wake the crisis. But there are legitimate concerns about just how deeply banks have become enmeshed in the art world, say experts. Cash-strapped museums in the U.S. have been accused of ceding creative control to corporations by accepting ready-made exhibits curated by banks' internal art staff rather than the museum's own curators. Bank of America, for example, regularly sponsors precurated shows in smaller American museums such as the Millennium Gate Museum in Atlanta and the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey. Bank of America media-relations manager Diane Wagner says the company offers its art to public spaces as a way to reach out to the community. "It's part of our DNA to want to share our collection with people," she says。

　　Jeffri says it's not that simple: "There are some dangers. A museum would not want to be known for giving over its space to private corporations. We need to think carefully about how banks and museums collaborate."

　　On the whole, Jeffri and others say, banks are still a positive force in the contemporary-art world. Sotheby's Saul Ingram, who last year opened a European office for the auction house's corporate arts services, says that as austerity measures pressure state-supported arts around the globe, enthusiasts should be grateful for the banks' involvement. "We are in a recession, but banks continue to sponsor and support the arts," he says. "That's crucial if we don't want a 10-year gap in our culture."

　　Colin Tweedy, CEO of Arts & Business in London, which works to establish links between commerce and culture, points out that patronage has been essential to art for centuries. "Artists have always had rich investors behind them, whether it's Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, da Vinci or Michelangelo," he says。

　　For his part, Hicks, who has been busy preparing for the Deutsche Bank—sponsored Frieze Art Fair in London Oct. 14-17, insists that the company's collection "proves that the bank is about more than just making money." He delights in the fact that the company hangs a Sigmar Polke painting described on the accompanying text panel as portraying "the West's heedless consumerism" near the very boardrooms bankers use to maximize profit from that consumerism. "Our art creates friction and intellectual stimulation," Hicks says. "Isn't that what art is all about?"

　　(时代周刊)

　　(解雨)