Deepening its commitment to the arts, Bank of America officially launched its Art Exhibition Program, which will make turnkey and customized exhibitions from the Bank of America Collection, one of the largest and most important corporate art collections in the world, widely available to museums free of charge. The Bank of America Art Exhibition Program includes exhibitions fully curated from the Bank of America collection that will travel to museums around the country, and exhibitions created in collaboration with curators from major museums.
The Bank of America Art Exhibition Program offers museums the opportunity to mount shows curated from the company's extensive collection of paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures and art objects. Museums participating in the program in 2008 include the International Center of Photography (New York), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia), the St. Louis Museum of Art, the Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte), the Boca Raton Museum of Art and a number of other institutions across the country (full schedule below). These exhibitions will allow audiences to experience extraordinary works of art from the Bank of America Collection, some of which have never been on public view.
"We are pleased to offer this unique program to museums and to share our collection with the widest possible audience," said Rena M. DeSisto, Arts & Culture Executive, Bank of America. "From our perspective, sharing these pieces of art with the public through our museum partners is the best possible use of the collection. Not only is there a cultural benefit, but we are bolstering institutions which serve as economic anchors for their respective communities."
"The scale and scope of this program is unmatched in the art world," said Millicent Gaudieri, Executive Director, Association of Art Museum Directors. "Bank of America - which is renowned for having one of the most expansive art collections in the world - is addressing a real need among museums. Not only do these exhibits have extraordinary curatorial value, but they help museums by covering most of the major costs associated with the exhibit. This program will be very popular, both for the museums and their visitors."
The largest exhibition scheduled for this year, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, is Reverberations: Modern and Contemporary Art from the Bank of America Collection, a unique collaborative exhibition of exceptional works from the 1920s through the present drawn from the Bank of America Collection. The show will feature approximately 80 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by prominent American artists including Milton Avery, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Ellsworth Kelly, John Marin, Elizabeth Murray, Ed Paschke, Faith Ringgold, Edward Ruscha and Frank Stella.
Other exhibitions include The Art Books of Henri Matisse; American Impressionists; The Wyeth Family: Three Generations; Andy Warhol Portfolios; the Hewitt Collection of African-American Art; and Art of the West featuring works by Oscar Berninghaus, Alfred J. Miller, E. Irvin Couse, Frank Tenney Johnson and others.
Future exhibitions will include the work of major photographers, including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Diane Arbus, Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, Cindy Sherman and Thomas Struth. Additional exhibitions are also being planned from Bank of America's contemporary art holdings, which include artists such as Jennifer Bartlett, Jasper Johns, Robert Raushenberg, Jonathan Borofsky, Ron Davis, David Hockney, Mark Tobey, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pat Steir, Marco Umazuiza, Robert Motherwell, Roy Lichtenstein, Julian Opie and Richard Misrach.
The Bank of America Collection is one of the oldest and largest corporate art collections in the world, reflecting the diversity of artistic expression in America and internationally. These works of art are displayed in museums and Bank of America's public galleries as well as in corporate offices. As the company has grown in recent decades, the size and scope of the Bank of America Collection has also grown. Today, the collection has been enriched with the art from more than three thousand legacy banks, each with a particular emphasis - regional, thematic, contemporary, or historical.
Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) is a financial services company, the largest bank holding company in the United States, by assets, and the second largest bank by market capitalization. Bank of America serves clients in more than 150 countries and has a relationship with 99 percent of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies and 83 percent of the Fortune Global 500. The company is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and a component of both the S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The bank's 2008 acquisition of Merrill Lynch made Bank of America the world's largest wealth manager and a major player in the investment banking industry.
The company holds 12.2% of all U.S. deposits, as of August 2009, and is one of the Big Four Banks of the United States, along with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo — its main competitors.
Bank of America's history dates to 1904, when Amadeo Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco, for the purpose of catering to immigrants other banks would not serve. When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck, Giannini was able to get all of the deposits out of the bank building and away from the fires. Because San Francisco's banks were in smoldering ruins and unable to open their vaults, Giannini was able to use the rescued funds to start lending within a few days of the disaster. From a makeshift desk of a few planks over two barrels, he lent money to anyone who was willing to rebuild. He took great pride in later years that all of these loans were repaid. In 1922, Giannini established Bank of America and Italyin Italy by buying Banca dell'Italia Meridionale, itself only established in 1918.
March 7, 1927, Mr. Giannini consolidated his Bank of Italy (101 branches) with the then newly formed Liberty Bank of America (175 branches). The result was the Bank of Italy National Trust & Savings Association with capital of $30,000,000, resources of $115,000,000.
In 1928, A. P. Giannini merged with Bank of America Los Angeles and consolidated it with his other bank holdings to create what would become the largest banking institution in the country. He renamed his Bank of Italy November 3, 1930, calling it Bank of America. The merger was completed in early 1929. and took the name Bank of America. The combined company was headed by Giannini with Monnette serving as co-Chair.
