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In recent years, artists and museums have repeatedly grappled with the ethical and ideological dilemmas posed by sponsorship from oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and other multinational corporations. But even before the rise of museum sponsorship in the 1970s, the intersections between cultural, political and corporate power represented sites of persistent volatility. This panel seeks papers that provide a historical perspective on these issues, exploring how artists and museums navigated the challenges posed by earlier forms of corporate art collecting and patronage. How did the investment of prominent pre-war companies such as Abbott Laboratories and Standard Oil engage the public relations challenges of their business practices? How did such businesses shape the meanings of artworks they supported? To what extent did artists understand these imperatives, and incorporate varied degrees of critique and/or compliance within the works they contributed to commercial settings? Such questions illustrate the complex entanglements of artistic aspiration, business strategy, and the construction of the public good. These histories reveal the contributions of agents beyond the artist to the making and meaning of corporate art, including art directors, advertising creatives, and public relations advisors. This panel will endeavor to reconstruct how the ideological and ethical dilemmas of corporate art projects are manifest both in the artworks themselves, and in the advertisements and exhibitions into which they were so often incorporated. We therefore seek papers on works of art, exhibitions, or material and visual culture that will illuminate the rich and contested histories of corporate collecting and patronage before 1970.