The Curator's Eye: Kemper Development

Modern Medicis

Some of the most influential art people aren’t at museums; they’re at corporations with vision. At Bellevue’s Kemper Development Company, landscape designer Andi Meucci helps shape the Eastside art scene. “My twin passions are landscape and art,” says Meucci. “They embrace each other.”


Michael Schultheis, Wings of Apollonius, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 108 x 144 inches

You might call her a mind-scape designer. When a landmark cedar tree had to be removed for a development in 2008, Meucci cleverly proposed making it immortal by having the trunk carved into a sculpture, Full Circle, and installing it at the Lodge at Bellevue Square. Meucci installed the new Ghost Trailer, a sculpture that is also a piece of landscaping, in a Kemper parking lot for the public-art show Bellwether 2010 (see p. tk) and is deeply involved with developing Kemper’s corporate collection.

Kemper doesn’t just collect art, but also places it thoughtfully for aesthetic effect. Take Michael Schultheis’s painting Wings of Apollonius at the Bellevue Hyatt. “We were looking for a large, colorful piece that was also contemplative,” says Kemper senior vice president Daniel Meyers. “The fact that it is based on math and physics also fits with our high-tech customer base on the Eastside.” The piece was inspired by the ancient Greek mathematician Apollonius of Perga, who wrote the book on conic sections. “He revolutionized the way we see geometry, especially the parabola, the ellipse and the hyperbola,” says Schultheis. Megan Des Jardins, of Schultheis’s gallery, Winston Wächter, says, “Schultheis translates the intricate world of numbers and relationships into something everyone can see.”

And that’s the idea of the corporate art collection: everyone can see it. •

FOCAL POINTS

Number of works in Kemper collection: Hundreds

How Schultheis thinks of his canvas: As a chalkboard

Sculpture that inspired Wings of Apollonius: Ellsworth Kelly’s Curve XXIV at Olympic Sculpture Park

Why Schultheis liked it: “It evokes the perfect scale/ratio of a pinecone.”

Schultheis’s schooling: Degrees in economics (WSU), math (UW), labor economics (Cornell), Italian and history (Università per Stranieri, Siena)

Places Schultheis exhibits: National Academy of Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, U.S. Embassy in Athens, Winston Wächter Fine Arts

Recent Schultheis interview: NPR’s Science Friday