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Walking into an office for a meeting, Rand Fisher, president of Iowa Area Development Group, noticed a collection of bright-haired troll dolls sitting on an employee’s desk. Purple hair, electric green hair, fluorescent pink hair – he noticed it all. Then he turned his head to see another desk piled high with a collection of coffee cups. Unimpressed by the cluttered display, Fisher turned around once more to be faced with a bulletin board smack-dab in the middle of the wall, splattered with junk.

Recalling the artistically discordant office, Fisher said, “That old line, about one chance to make a first impression, I think that is something we understand.”

And that is why he called upon the services of Robyn Olson, owner of Off the Wall, when he decided to jazz up his company’s newly remodeled conference room with bold photographs that would create a mosaic of his company’s mission.

“We said in some way we would like our art to be a reflection, versus just something anyone might have picked out of a catalog and is merely intended to fill space,” Fisher said. “I think it helps reinforce the substance of our organization, the capacity of our organization. We want people to come to our office and know that we are for real and that we have been here for a long time. We like to use our artwork to underscore who we are, (and) what we feel is important.”

So with a phone call to Olson, Fisher was able to get professional advice for a vision he had, a vision that included photographs, bold frames and a bare wall.

Independent consulting

Olson is an independent art consultant who provides services mostly to small businesses that are looking to add pieces of art, or businesses that have undergone remodeling and need to reinstall art, or new businesses that are looking at art for the first time.

“As a consultant it’s easier doing smaller projects,” she said.

Even though Olson has done some consulting for larger corporations, she said that work is usually more “cut and dried” than projects for smaller businesses and is usually tailored to appeal to a mass audience rather than fit a company niche.

“In my experience, it can become more impersonal in a bigger business,” she said. “It becomes more impersonal and more a case of finding things within the budget that are pleasing to look at for employees, and that fill the space appropriately and that kind of thing.”

But nonetheless, Olson explained that when she meets with her clients – big or small – for the first time, it is usually to see the space, hear the company’s vision and discuss the client’s specific needs and wants. Once she has all the information and has seen the space she will be working with, Olson “takes that ball and runs with it.”

“Usually, I can’t come in right at the first with an idea, because I have to hear from the client what it is that they need or want or see what they envision,” she said. “And then usually I will come back with a proposal, and sometimes we will do it in phases depending on what their budget is. I usually try to give them two choices – you don’t want to give too many choices; people find that confusing. Or a lot of times, I will bring things in that I think would be great and then we will go from there.”

Fortunately, Olson is able to pass her professional discount on to her clients, which means what she pays for a piece of art is the same price her client will pay. From there, Olson charges an hourly rate for her consulting services, with a minimum of four hours.

Gallery consultation

Operating on a larger scale than Olson, Moberg Gallery considers itself a corporate art consulting business, as well as a gallery. Working with clients such as Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. and Principal Financial Group Inc., Moberg is no stranger to the logistics behind corporate art consulting.

“Art is crucial,” said Jackie Moberg, co-owner of Moberg Gallery. “I think if you don’t have anything on the wall, you haven’t finished it. It’s not done; you just have space. You don’t have anything to intrigue or interest, nothing thought-provoking, nothing with emotion. It’s just a space to get around in.”

When the gallery becomes the art consultant on a project, it is either because there was a call out to consultants to bid on the job and the gallery won the bid, or because a developer contacted the gallery owners personally to be the art consultants on the project, as Ladco Development Inc. did for the new Davis Brown Tower.

“Some of these other businesses, we go in and some of them have no idea (about art),” Moberg said, “and we have to help them understand that there should be a vision – what it could be – and then get them excited enough to put the money and time into it. And when they do it, they are really excited that they did and they are always like, ‘Thank you so much, I can’t believe how much of an impact this has had on our business and our employees.’ But getting them to that point where they understand that is a little bit tough sometimes.”

But despite the tough spots, the gallery has a streamlined system it follows once it’s selected as the art consultant on a project.

“It starts with us walking through the space and seeing what’s already there,” Moberg said. “And sometimes we are just looking at drywall studs, or sometimes we’re looking at finishes, or we might just be looking at blueprints, which is a great position to be in because the sky is the limit at that point. You can design new walls fit for art, rather than just kind of incorporating art into the building after the fact.

“But the first thing we do is just identify the areas that need addressed more than any other spots, the focal points: right when you walk in, the main corridors, areas that are seen by the most visitors or employees. We identify with the client what spots are most important and then at that point, when we have the spaces identified, we know what size we are looking at, roughly, (and) we have either their colors that are already established, or we are looking at color charts. And then we can go to our artists’ inventories and pull pieces that we think are appropriate.”

Once the pieces are pulled, Moberg Gallery presents them to the client’s art selection committee, which is then able to see different artists, different colors and different forms of art. From there, the committee members narrow down the pieces to the ones they like best, and have those artists draft more site-specific, budgeted proposals.

“We try to get artwork that the client likes, first of all, and then try to make it work within the building,” said TJ Moberg, co-owner of the gallery. “Once the artist gets selected, we put together a contract between the artist, the gallery and the developer. The artist gets their money; we get our money.”

Jackie Moberg said the gallery works on approximately 35 to 40 corporate projects a year, from the installation of a single piece to entire buildings, with time commitments that range from one week to two years. She said the gallery has yet to work on a $1 million project, but has worked on projects priced from as little as $5,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In-house consulting

Somewhere in between independent consulting and the corporate consulting of art galleries sits David Dahlquist, partner at RDG Planning & Design and RDG Dahlquist Art Studio. Dahlquist was chosen as the sole art consultant by ING USA Annuity and Life Insurance Co. after he was asked to write a proposal for its new headquarters. ING, which came to Des Moines after it purchased Equitable of Iowa Cos., wanted Dahlquist to assess the value of the company’s artwork and give advice on which pieces the company should keep.

“(ING) wanted to know what was worth keeping, the valuation,” he said. “Were there recommendations for letting things go or reassessing them? Putting them on eBay? Selling them to a gallery or an art broker? Or it might have meant giving them away to employees.”

Answering these questions, Dahlquist and ING prioritized the pieces and the placement of artwork, identifying high-traffic areas and categorizing them into primary, secondary and tertiary locations. Noting the different priority levels, Dahlquist put together a comprehensive proposal and budget that outlined all the stages in acquiring and maintaining ING’s art collection

“You have to have a guide, something to follow so that as you acquire a piece, you know what are the best places to put them,” he said.

Impressed by his work, ING asked Dahlquist to maintain his active role as the company’s independent art consultant, and even built out a storage area to safely maintain the artwork as it was acquired and to keep track of art inventory.

“As an independent consultant who does not have an ax to grind, it really removes the politics from the (art selection),” he said.