Art for Art’s Sake? An Exploratory Study of the Possibility to Align Works of Art with an Organization’s Identity

Some companies invest large amounts of money in corporate art collections. One of the reasons for this investment may be that works of art can be used to communicate corporate identity. The aim of this study was to explore whether people are able to align a work of art with a corporate identity. Forty-six participants rated the fit of eight works of art with four different corporate identities of existing companies. The results show that participants agree strongly with respect to whether or not a work of art is aligned with a certain identity. The fact that works of art can be recognized as aligned with a company’s identity could have important implications for companies that use reproductions of works of art to decorate their walls because customers may take these as a symbol of the company’s identity.