Office parks’ perks
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Perplexed, a passerby paused before illuminated panels portraying a panoply of pills. “Bizarre,” was the prompt, cheerful diagnosis of another woman walking by.
“As you can see,” said Margaret Carlson, “we are getting a mixed reaction.”
The art is owned by Aby Rosen, whose RFR Holding bought five interconnected office buildings in Stamford last year for a reported $500 million.
As Stamford pedestrians have been treated this summer to the “Art in Public Places” outdoor exhibit, workers in RFR buildings have been afforded a peek at the private collection of a man considered among the most avid collectors of modern art today, with more than 450 works at last report, including 80 by Andy Warhol alone.
As visitors ascend four mezzanine levels leading to the main lobby for One and Two Stamford Plaza, they are greeted with a succession of cube-shaped pieces that resemble what one might find at a car-crushing plant ”“ at least one dealing with Cadillacs or Mercedes Benzes.Â
A worker in the building said she found the piece jarring at first, but it has since grown on her.
Of course, modern art”™s modus operandi is to jangle one”™s perspectives sufficiently to bring the viewer new perspective. RFR”™s collection is all the more jarring in that an elevated courtyard in the complex is still bedecked with five neoclassic statues in various leaping poses, a small fountain in the foreground.
Those were installed by the complex”™s original developer F.D. Rich Co., which has carted off most other pieces it had for installation in other Fairfield County commercial properties it owns.
RFR is not the only collector in Fairfield County”™s commercial real estate scene. At the eastern end of the county, R.D. Scinto Inc. maintains a sculpture park at an office park in Shelton, replete with both modern sculptures as well as classics such as a replica of Michangelo”™s statue David.
In a sense, the collections reflect the tastes of Fairfield County”™s moneyed executives, who purchase art in sufficient quantities to support local auction houses as well as roadside statuary vendors along Route 7 and other major throughways, where one can find statues of creatures great and small, from English setters to elephants.
Just around the corner on the Ridgefield-Wilton border, the Weir Farm National Historic Site is the lone national park devoted to the fine arts, commemorating the life and works of the Impressionist painter J. Alden Weir, and running workshops throughout the summer.
Needless to say, Rosen has made quite an impression in his brief time in Stamford, not to mention New York City and other locales where RFR”™s real-estate collection has outstripped Rosen”™s art holdings.
“Aby Rosen has done more than anyone else to broker the marriage between art and real estate,” wrote a New York magazine journalist in February. “Does he have taste? Maybe, at this level, it doesn”™t matter.”
It certainly doesn”™t matter for Carlson, who indicates she has a casual appreciation at best for modern art. She can appreciate the impact of the collection on building tenants and those seeking space, however, saying it has had a healthy effect on leasing.
In the meantime, a running joke has surfaced in the complex as workers search out the prescription drugs that share space both in the main-floor lobby panels and their own bathroom cabinets.
As for the painkiller that made Stamford-based Purdue Pharma L.P. famous, then notorious following rampant abuse?
“OxyContin?” Carlson said. “It”™s in there.”