Art Collections as a Strategy Tool: a Typology based on the Belgian Financial Sector

Reasons why organizations sponsor artistic and cultural events have attracted a lot of scholarly attention. However, understanding why organizations create and develop their own collections has remained largely under investigated. This is especially striking in the financial sector where companies are well-known for owning substantial art collections. This paper has been written in order to consider two distinct aspects: understanding why financial institutions in Belgium have begun to create their own art collections and how they developed them, and then suggesting a model which enables to categorize each actor according to their policies of acquisition and their managerial objective.