Recap: Bank of America Sends Its Art Vault on the Road With Free Shows, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

"Card Players," a 1945 oil on canvas painting by Milton Avery, is shown in this undated handout photo. Bank of America will make worksfrom its 15,000-piece collection, including this one, available for loan to museums around the world that need help in funding a major exhibition. Source: Milton Avery Trust/ARS, New York/Bank of America via Bloomberg News

According to Bloomberg News for years, Carlos Tortolero, the president of Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art, wanted to stage a major exhibition of contemporary Mexican painters like Ruffino Tamayo and Chicano artist Carlos Almaraz.

Their best works were hard to find and the museum could never afford the cost of putting on such a show, Tortolero said.

Then last fall, Bank of America Corp., the second-biggest U.S. bank and a sponsor of Tortolero's museum, quietly rolled out a program to lend artworks from its 15,000-piece collection to small museums and university galleries. Tortolero learned about it in a meeting with bank executives.

Now his museum is looking forward to exhibiting 60 pieces from the bank's collection, including works by Tamayo and Almaraz, starting in 2009. Bank of America will cover the cost of shipping, insurance and installation. Tortolero figures the tab will come to about $300,000.

``We wouldn't have been able to do the show without this support, no doubt about it,'' Tortolero said in a phone interview.

For Bank of America the payoff lies in building a reputation for corporate philanthropy, while boosting the company's profile with potential customers at a time when the financial news has been bad. On April 21, the bank announced that first-quarter net income declined 77 percent as the company set aside $6.01 billion for bad loans. It was the third straight quarter that Bank of America's earnings have dropped.

`Burnishes Our Brand'

``The loan program definitely burnishes our brand,'' Rena DeSisto, arts and culture executive for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank, said in an interview. ``It's an excellent way to combine the company's business goals with community support.''

Funding traveling exhibitions is also a way for the bank to show off its collection, said Lisa Austin, a Miami-based art adviser who counsels collectors on purchases.

``Not only does the bank get to say our art is good enough for a museum, but then they get to use the museum for customer entertainment,'' Austin said.

Highlights of the collection include Andy Warhol's ``Muhammad Ali'' (1978), a multi-colored screen print of the former world heavyweight boxing champ, and Henri Matisse's ``The Knife Thrower'' (1947), an abstract collage of leaf-like images surrounding a figure that looks like a body in silhouette.

Sale Plans Shelved

``They have some excellent works,'' said Sandra Lang, director of New York University's visual arts administration program. ``The fact that they can put together different exhibitions from their own collection is pretty amazing.''

Though the bank considered selling off the collection in stages, DeSisto said those plans have been shelved for now. Even so, she said, ``individual pieces here and there'' may be offered for sale.

Last year, the bank put four paintings up for auction, including N.C. Wyeth's ``Port Clyde, Maine'' and his son Andrew's ``The New Table,'' to raise money for charities in New York. Three of the paintings sold for a total of $615,000, Courtney King, a spokeswoman for Sotheby's, said.

There were no takers for the N.C. Wyeth.

Among the museums benefiting from Bank of America's loan program are Chicago's Loyola University Museum of Art. It recently showed Andy Warhol's ``Silver Clouds,'' an installation of helium-filled, silver pillows floating in a 2,000 square-foot room.

Arbus, Avedon

Starting May 7, Florida's Boca Raton Museum of Art will display U.S. impressionists from the bank's collection, including works by painters Frederick Childe Hassam and Wilson Henry Irvine.

In New York, the International Center of Photography will exhibit pictures by Diane Arbus, Lisette Model and Richard Avedon. The show runs from May 16 to Sept. 7.

Works by painter Frank Stella and minimalist sculptor Donald Judd go on display June 28 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. With an annual budget of $14 million, the museum couldn't afford a show like that, director David Brigham said.

Bank of America's art holdings are ``extraordinary'' in scope, Brigham said in a phone interview. ``We could put together dozens of exhibitions from its collection.''

The bank's art trove has grown considerably over the past two decades, as the company acquired other financial institutions including FleetBoston Financial Corp., MBNA Corp. and LaSalle Bank Corp. -- along with the art they owned.

`Add Verve'

Chase Manhattan Bank pioneered the practice of major corporate art acquisitions in 1959 under then-president David Rockefeller. The collection, now owned by JPMorgan Chase & Co., following the 2000 merger of J.P. Morgan & Co. and Chase, has grown to 30,000 works.

The art is displayed in the bank's executive offices and public areas around the world, according to the JPMorgan Web site.

The idea was to ``spruce up the premises'' and ``encourage an interest in art among the bank officers,'' Fraser Seitel, Rockefeller's spokesman, said in a phone interview. ``It was David's view that bank offices were populated by plants and furniture. Art would add a verve to the surroundings.''

Deutsche Bank AG, Germany's largest bank, has a 53,800- piece collection of post-World War II drawings, prints, collages and photographs, said Liz Christensen, the company's art curator for the Americas. The bank began building its collection about 30 years ago, she said.

In Chicago, Tortolero is delighted his museum of Mexican art will get to show dozens of contemporary works from Bank of America's vault next year -- at no cost to the museum.

Still, he said, he wouldn't mind owning a painting or two from the collection and has been talking to the bank about a possible purchase.

``We'd be very happy to have a Tamayo in our collection,'' he said.