AlleyCat News - January 2001
Art Animates Work
Scient employees get their 15 minutes of fame
Andy Warhol's spirit lives on. Scient, the Internet professional services firm now occupying the artist's former "Factory" on Union Square, recently hosted art@work, a program for employees to share their creatiity with coworkers.
Debuting in October, the program featured live poetry readings, classical music, and films on opening night. Painting and photography exhibits remained up for several months afterward.
We had been talking for a long time about a way to highlight the history of out office," says Wendi sturgis, managing director of operation for Scient's New York office. So, "instead of just habing some framed Andy Warhol prints," Scient decided to showcase the talents of its employees.
Unsure how to go about such an endeavot, Sturgis contacted the Business Committee for the Arts (BCA), an organization founded in 1967 by David Rockefeller that encourages company employees to show off their creative side to their fellow workers.
art@work created a new dynamic in many companies," says Judith Jedlicka, the president of BCA. "Exhibitions and events brought individuals from different departments together and created dialogues that may not have taken place without this program.
Other companies that have participated in the art@work program include watersdesign.com, a Web design firm in New York; Goldstein Golub Kessler, a New York accounting firm; and General Mills in Minneapolis.
"In some instances," Jedlicka adds, "employees were so taken by a work that they purchased it from their colleagues."
Since the first program in New York, Scient has held similar events in its Boston and Chicago offices and plans future art exhibitions in its San Francisco and London locations. "It's been such a huge success that we want to sustain it," Sturgis says.
Sturgis adds that there was no committee to determine what art was - or was not - displayed; the individual artists/employees exercised their own judgement when submitting pieces. "They wanted to be proud of what they brought in," Sturgis says. "There was no refrigerator art."
