Collecting and Social Responsibility

The proposed paper aims to analyze the unique function of corporate collections mastered by the owner-collector. I am referring here to collections which are formed by wealthy individuals, but which are financially based on the capital of the collector’s company. My talk will focus on an Israeli case: the Doron Sebbag - ORS collection. The ORS collection was formed in the 1980s by the company owner – Israeli millionaire Doron Sebbag. ORS is one of the largest human-resources companies in Israel, notorious for the exploitation of its workers. Throughout the years, Sebbag gained resonance in the local art milieu, thanks to the ORS collection, and became a board member in the second-largest public art museum in Israel – The Tel Aviv Museum.

By concentrating on two large exhibitions (in 2000 and 2008) at the Tel Aviv Museum, which were drawn from the ORS collection, this paper will consider the question of social responsibility with regard to art collections and collecting. I will show that the particular case of the ORS collection demonstrates a model that reconciles between the personal sense of social commitment on behalf of the collector, and between a cold approach that characterizes the company, especially under liberal economies. Ultimately, I will argue, the museum becomes instrumental in the hybridization of the corporate and the individual collector, which embodies a dualistic agenda of social responsibility, complying at the same time to neoliberal codes, and to the traditional paternal role of the collector.