Businesses can show support for the arts community by providing rotating gallery space within a commercial workspace or public building. By collaborating with local arts councils, artist's cooperatives, or school-based arts programs, businesses can have a rotating display of art work and can reinforce their community support and connections.
Art displays can reinforce social responsibility goals. If a business is supporting literacy efforts, for example, a rotating art display of the book arts, art works related to state sponsored reading programs, or an art display program with local libraries, could all reinforce the goals.
Community arts groups can contract with a business to manage the space, including changing the artwork or display on a regular schedule. All the business needs to do is the initial outreach and contracting, and providing the space. Artists are always looking for opportunities for public display of work, and public buildings and workspaces are a wonderful opportunity to provide support for the arts community.
Businesses can show support for diversity and inclusion by coordinating rotating art displays with multicultural celebrations. Diversity in the type of art displayed, as well, such as a show of quilts from the nineteenth century by African American women, or tribal masks from Central America carved by indigenous artists, can provide interest and challenge viewer's knowledge and understanding. These efforts can coordinate with human resources work celebrating the people and places where the company does business.
Efforts to show connections between people can also be made through art. Unique basketry, for example, is celebrated in every culture. A display of modern and antique baskets from around the world shows both a sensitivity to native crafts and the unique connections between people.
Walkways, waiting rooms, transition spaces, and restaurant and lunch rooms are good choices for public art displays. A display case that is fronted with a glass door along a walkway, for instance, will be both widely viewed and easily changed, and provide a display for a variety of types and forms of art.
