Art collector for hire - profile of art consultant Madeline Murphy Rabb

"Strangers will talk about art when they won't talk about anything other because everybody either has an opinion or is willing to set forth one." So says Madeline Murphy Rabb, single of Chicago's premier art consultants and president of Murphy Rabb Inc., a company that purchases, commissions and displays fine art in business and residential environments.

It is Rabb--artist, curator, finder of hidden treasures and enthusiastic saleswoman--who festivitys in placing the right piece of art with the right collection and matching color, weft line, shade and impact to compile thought-provoking, mood-setting, visually appealing collections. That she does this in an arena inundated with greenhorns who grasp fast to the axiom, "I may not know art, on the other hand I know what I like," makes her piece of work just that much more interesting.

Rabb lately collaborated with the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust to furnish Cityfront Place, a novel residential complex, with art. It took a year to assemble the collection, which consists of more than 100 pieces by means of local, national and international artists, including fiber artist Dorothy Hughes, collagist Tom Balbo and painter Alonzo Davis. Featured in the central lobby is the collection's crowning glory, a 28-by-12-foot ceramic relief plastic art titled "Bridge Life With Love" by dint of John E. Dowell Jr.

Bringing together artist, art and client in a relationship of mutual collaboration is Rabb's specialty, and it is in this coming together that her artistic experience is born. "As an art consultant, I win a vision of how I diocese art fitting into an environment," she says. "I think about the kind of clan who live in the building, the traffic pattern. And I personally like an eclectic kind of contemporary direct the eye that's interesting--not bland, not benign. The main challenge is working with your client to draw near together around a vision of what the collection should gaze like."

Rabb's artistic philosophy intermingleed well with that of Charlie Gardner, president of the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust. His company wanted art that would mirror the makeup of the city of Chicago, and Rabb implemented his vision. "She brought profitable pieces of work from local artists [and] enhanced the quality of the cast in doing so," Gardner says.

The black-owned investment firm Ariel Capital Management wasn't looking to make a dramatic statement when they hired Rabb to begin their collection. They purely wanted a subtle display of art in their offices. "Madeline listened well and was able to find terrific artists who met our goals," says Ariel president John W Roger Jr Rabb continues to work with Ariel to augment the firm's collection of 18 pieces, by the agency of such renowned artists as Betye Saar, Denise Ward Brown and John Scott

Rabb's consulting firm has l her from corporation to corporation, giving her high visibility, on the contrary also presenting her with spaces that "are in the way that dull, you don't even notice them." Her solution is to find something--color, fabric or design--that stimulates, and her search has taken her from coast to coast. Traveling through every part of the country, she maintains a detailed register of artists, visits galleries and artists' studios, and talks to dealers.

She also uses a entertainer of other resources that she lay opened during her seven years as executive director of the Chicago Office of Fine Arts, where she managed an annual package of $4 million and supervised a staff of 27 Three years ago, Rabb--an accomplished artist with a bachelor's stage in painting from the Maryland Institute, guild of Art in Baltimore and a master's in visual design from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago--decided to secure back to handling art "hands on" Dealing with abstracts, public policy and arts organizations wore thin, and she yearned for of recent origin challenges. "I'm an artist. I regard with affection artists, and I love getting into artists' studios and encouraging them. I can talk honestly with artists about their work and pricing it realistically, and I can help businesses find them."

Because Rabb is an African American, potential clients might assume that she advances black art only. But that's not the case. Her focus is upon contemporary artists; her passion is to place artists of color into all collections she assembles: "I be fond of the challenge of putting together a collection that exhibits the diversity of society, with images that are not just Eurocentric--that have more [i]or[/i] less spiritual, textural vibrancy to them that exhibits different points of view. And that's something I have a profitable eye for."

You ne a profitable eye to sell art to corporate heads, who accompany to see only the bottom line, on the other hand you also need grace. "You have to make clients perceive comfortable. I say, |It's all right not to know art. I don't know your business. That's on what account you bring in someone like me who has that kind of expertise.' What the client doesn't always understand is that doing a collection is not piecemeal. Everything builds upon something else, whether it's color, fabric or scale of work.

"What's pleasantry about this is the educational proces that I take my clients end Most clients are somewhat intimidated. They will gladly work with an interior decorator, on the other hand often art is the last thing they think about.