Lynne Sowder

Abstract

During the 1980s, Lynne Sowder also worked at a bank, but the opportunities for her to set change in motion were quite different from Gail Snowden’s. A trained art historian, Sowder was hired by First Bank of Minneapolis in 1980 to build an art collection for the institution. With the backing of the bank chairman, she proceeded to buy contemporary art that she felt was not only of the highest caliber but also would focus employees’ attention on important social issues of the time. Her hope was that the art would stimulate dialogue and foster connections among people who were working within what she perceived to be a strict and often hostile corporate environment. She soon had to admit, however, that precisely the opposite was happening. Hostility escalated, and much of it was directed at her and at the arts themselves as an elitist and alienating enterprise invading the workplace.