Working in an Art Gallery
I don’t normally write about work here, and when I do I’m somewhat circumspect about what I say, but — and following my usual policy of not naming names — I do have something that I wanted to share.
For the last week or so, I’ve been working in an art gallery.
Not an official art gallery, where memebers of the public walk in and so on, but suddenly the corridors outside my office have been hung full of paintings, with only an inch or two of space between each one.
What has happened is that my employers decided that it would be nice to brighten up the office buildings and assessed our art collection. It turned out that we already had a considerable amount of art — mostly gathering dust on shelves and in cellars.
And so the decision was made to hang paintings all around the building, in conference rooms and so on. After all, not only will it brighten up the place, but it means that artworks aren’t being forgotten about and gathering dust.
However, rather than just locate the art around the building randomly, they’ve put it all on display in my corridor for the time being, to allow people to view and request particular pieces of art.
Not everyone likes it. This is one of the immutable laws of working in an office. If something changes, no matters what the change is, or who makes it, someone won’t like it. But most people seem to like the idea of the art, even if they aren’t necessarily impressed with each piece. That’s also my position: some of them are rather dull, drab, and possibly even insipid, but others … well, some of them I’d like to take home.
And it’s been quite pleasant being able to walk down the corridor to the coffee machine, stopping to look at different pieces of art — particularly the vibrant, colourful and slightly stylised “Autumn Orchard” by a Nicola Elstone, which I’ve taken a great liking to. Oh, and there’s one of a car park with lots of cars and shopping trolleys and stuff that’s nice as well. You’d have to see it to understand why, though.
The only drawback is of course that when the time comes to redistribute the majority of the art around the building, I just know that the walls are going to feel dull and nondescript again, and of course Sod’s Law will dictacte that all of the paintings I like will be distributed elsewhere — probably in conference rooms I never visit — and the couple left in my corridor will either be bland and unispiring or loud and particularly garish.
Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed having the art here to walk past in the first place. So I’d just like to offer a public thanks to the people involved — even though I’m not going to tell you who they are!
Hello. I am 
[...] couple of months ago, I first mentioned the corridor art in my workplace, when our corridor was being used to hang various artworks in prior to distribution [...]