H.Scott Westover, Curator, Progressive Insurance

Progressive Insurance has more to it externally than what meets the eye; it's not only Northeast Ohio's well-known insurance company, but also contains in its West Campus a growing art department and art collection with visual discoveries at every turn. Upon entering Progressive’s Winter Garden located within the West Building, air and light merge with Olympian-sized, soaring ceilings, stately palm trees, gleaming columns and spiral staircases. Installations sprout from the floor, drop from ceilings, and communicate a visual obsession in a work environment that resembles a superb art exhibition. Progressive's art collection, initiated by Peter B. Lewis in 1974, developed into a world-class contemporary collection previously curated by his ex-spouse, Toby Lewis. Since her departure, the curator of corporate art position is now headed by H. Scott Westover, who emits a spark that connects dimensionally with Progressive's art and iconoclastic work environment. This Gen Xer maneuvers a jaw-dropping mixed media and installation collection at Progressive, igniting the company with his missive to educate not only its Cleveland employees, but also to instill arts evangelizing to Progressive's 27,000 employees nationally. Tisha Nemeth-Loomis spoke with him and Kristin Rogers, Art Education and Communications Manager, about their art activism in the workplace.

Cool Cleveland: I noticed that the art is not centralized in one area, but spread generously throughout the facility.
H. Scott Westover: Art is used as directionals or locators [for employees] and the facility is filled with nation-wide artists. Our focus is how art can work for the company, and how it can affect people in other departments.

Kristin Rogers: The art collection originally began in the North Building in 1974. The collection grew and was then added to the West Building. This building’s atriums were built to accommodate art to beautify the space. We collect work as a type of perk, along with other perks that Progressive offers its employees: Yoga, mental and physical health services, a travel agent, postal services, etc. That’s why we’re here: to contribute to our company's unique work environment.

Are you collaborating with any other businesses that have art collections?
HSW: We’re not working with anybody outside of Progressive; our staff is entirely responsible for the program. We have a world-class collection and art education opportunities, but in the past, we did not have on-going programs.

What is your department’s priority with the art education program?
HSW: To identify and reach an audience – there are a variety of people at Progressive who respond to a variety of art – to connect the two, and get 27,000 of our employees nationally geared up to become a new art audience is the focus. Other than that, I am working hard to uphold the standards of art at Progressive.

Talk about the genesis of this program, and how you’re keeping up with art while exposing art to employees.
HSW: Locally, we [Progressive] visit as many shows as possible, participating in studio visits, for example, is Kristin’s role. I wanted to work here so much to help address Cleveland art in a way that has not been done before. I am willing to do this and am committed to it – Kristin has the contacts and knowledge, and together we are building a comprehensive program.

How do you determine which art is suitable for the collection?
HSW: If the quality is not there, we do not want it. There’s only one standard: is it has to be great. We only buy quality art and do not compromise. In this way, we do not buy sympathetically, but critically. Artwork must be potent, great, and commanding; I don’t care if it is from Berea, Cleveland or London. We are not interested in pedigree, either, just the work itself.

How will the art program morph into a larger vision for Progressive?
HSW: We have opportunities to give an Art History 101-102 level of art education, and we’re doing it right now. If a Progressive employee didn’t get this opportunity in school, or if they did not go to school, they can receive the education here. We have the capacity to teach. One day we’ll be teaching individuals how to do conceptual work.

KR: We have activities available during Progressive’s Art Appreciation and Education Month. It’s an opportunity to develop art education; that’s the mission of Progressive’s art department. We’re currently fine-tuning it, as there are tangible ways to set education on fire.

HSW: We believe that for as many employees who work for Progressive, we hope to increase the art appreciating population by that number [27,000].

In what ways?
HSW: We have artists come in to do visiting lectures and we also have exhibitions. Additionally, we have the Brown Bag Lunch Art Appreciation Program which includes art making workshops. We have many amazing outreach programs available to each of our 27,000 employees nationally. Art reaches Progressive's employees, as evidenced by the successful turnout for the Employee Art Show, through which we received from our employees 175 submissions. Art at Progressive supports the company's plan to engage and inspire employees, and put simply, to be a great place to work.

In hopes of cultivating cultural professionals from your work-force and setting an example for others?
HSW: Cultural professionals? Yes, or at the very least we provide opportunities for Progressive employees to become interested.

KR: The Employee Art Show involves Progressive's employees nationally, and we have it curated by a third party with curators from the Cleveland Museum of Art and SPACES [Gallery]. That show toured the country to five locations, including Colorado Springs, Sacramento, Phoenix, Austin and Tampa. It encourages our employees. We are honored to provide the exhibition for them as a creative outlet.

HSW: One Progressive employee in New York had all his expenses paid to visit Cleveland and to see his work in the Employee Art Show; we hope it is a sign of things to come. We also made a video of our employees, speaking about art in their life and what art at Progressive means to them.

What is your budget for the arts collection?
HSW: The budget is more modest than you'd think. We focus on how art can work for the company, how it can affect people who work here in all departments. We're collecting art that challenges, provokes and inspires.

Which types of art are you currently interested in and collecting?
HSW: What I’m collecting also speaks about the differences in my approach to collecting. Currently, sculpture, new media, and tech-based art is setting me on fire. I think video works sculpture is really important; Progressive has a lot of transitory spaces that can be shaped into 3-D this way. Many brick walls in this building make it difficult to hang 2-D work, so I’m jazzed to find nooks and surprising areas to accommodate our art. Kristin and I wanted to find unusual areas to place art, spaces that are in quirky, unexpected locations.

Is it Progressive’s priority to inaugurate nascent and emerging art, or to just maintain current trends?
HSW: We are patrons for emerging and mid-career artists, so it is not a missstatement to say we are patrons of the arts. If you ask me, Progressive's lasting contributions in the arts is that we’re serious art patrons. This belief is fundamental to the continuation of art everywhere…

KR: Reporting on trends is not a primary focus of ours. If the art we collect turns out to be particularly relevant or representative, it only underscores our commitment to make intelligent purchases of art.

So trend-spotting occurs indirectly, as an end result from the process of selection; it doesn’t influence the purchasing decision making?
HSW: We are not market-driven, we are concept driven. We are not interested, for example, in Anime or outsider art. We are interested in medicine and science in art, and engineering [influences in art]. I’m passionate about technology in art, architecturally-informed painting and drawing. Art that investigates systems and structures that portrays systems at work, modes of interrelation, moments of meeting, synapses. Potency and meaning in art occurs for me when art speaks to the sociological self, the self that we, each of us, show others. There is so much noise in our time made about the psychology of art, of the artist, of the viewer. I'm interested in how art can be experienced by groups of people and how that art can reify, question, even beautify systems of interrelation that already (or could) exist in our lives.

KR: For example, Julianne Swartz [an artist in the collection] explores the odd similarity between voyeurism and self awareness, surveillance and introspection. The piece is called You Are Here, and it's an interactive work in which you look into a periscope-like structure with a rotating mirror at the opposite end. What happens is, as the individual peers into the work presumably to see themselves, and knowing there is a mirror at the other end, they witness a rotating wide-angle view of their surroundings, showing them that where "they are" is always contextualized by the space others inhabit.

That particular piece's medium seems unconventional compared to most of the art I've seen today.
HSW: Art at Progressive represents all varieties of media created by the most talented international artists we can find. No medium is overlooked or uninteresting. Although, I must admit, photography/video/new media art has to be really special and impressive to be acquired by Progressive. I am an old soul; I love painting and drawing first, always.

What has changed at the art department since you began your tenure as curator?
HSW: The most significant change in our department since Toby's departure has been the change in staff. We now have five super committed, creative, and accomplished individuals shaping the future of art at Progressive: Michael Wartgow, Regional Manager; Christie Frey, Registrar; David Russell Stempowski, Preparator; and Kristin Rogers, Education and Communications Manager. I am proud, honored, and inspired to work with each of them.

Are you working with outside companies with your arts programs, do you collaborate with them?
HSW: We’re friends with other companies who collect as well, but we are not working with anybody outside of our selected staff.

How do you keep sharp as a curator? Who are the people you're speaking with locally who are making a difference to you and providing valuable insight and direction?
HSW: I remain sharp by reading contemporary art books and magazines. More importantly, I maintain a constant dialogue with artists and friends who share my love for contemporary art. Dialogue and debate help me formulate not mere opinions, but acute opinions.

The art at Progressive has received recognition from Business Week and Art and Antique Magazine rated Progressive as one of the 10 best Corporate Collections in America. It's impressive recognition, but what is the value of it if Progressive's employees look at the art passively?
HSW: Progressive people do not look at art passively. They can't. Employees and guests at Progressive are surrounded by art and engulfed by an atmosphere charged with creativity and the pursuit of excellence. To disregard or overlook art at Progressive is to live without verve, without a pulse.

Kristin, you're a staunch advocate of art intervention, art education, and you've a background that includes creating audience's direct involvement and participation in art. What role will you play in making the art education program at Progressive interactive?
KR: Education has, in the past, existed in a static presence in the company through things such as exhibitions and wall didactics. Now, with the advent of an Education Program, we are making that role more active and engaging. For example, we're offering field trips to art and cultural institutions, bringing in visiting artists, and conducting lectures. Progressive's two main Cleveland campuses each have gallery spaces where we will rotate theme-based exhibitions, and we are making our intranet more of an educational resource.

Then at the end of June, artist Barbara Westermann will come to Campus Two for three days to install her wall sculpture; she'll be doing this throughout the day while employees are passing by. At the end of the week, we will then host a question-and-answer Brown Bag Lunch.

Additionally, one of the most successful communication pieces we have right now is the Eye-on-Art group. It's essentially an art club that is a group of employees who have repeatedly attended our events and programs. They're on a distribution E-mail list and these are the people we can count on to support what we do.

HSW: Thanks to Kristin, the list is growing. Kristin has developed our Eye-on-Art club, a group that is comprised of over 100 people in Cleveland who are on board to support the art programs we are doing. These people are Progressive's own fans and fellow travelers to our programs who in turn bring other visitors. It's a great testimony to our effort to win over a fan base.

Within your work place, explain the difference about the Peter B. Lewis influence in a city where he is viewed as the ultimate renegade.
HSW: Honestly, I'm not sure that he is viewed as a renegade. He may be mythologized as one by Clevelanders, but that is hype and myth-making, not true biography. And at the very least, that myth is not perpetuated at Progressive. He is seen in general as a visionary leader whose legacy is a company and corporate culture committed to and comfortable with change. Imagine a company that is comfortable with change--that's us.

Collaboration within Cleveland's existing leadership is a popular topic in our city right now, but often I come across young professionals who integrate collaboration more quickly than our predecessors, in terms of interacting and problem solving in the work place. As young professionals in Cleveland, we ultimately have to rely on our own resourcefulness. In the workplace, we create what we need out of what we have, in an environment that often does not provide opportunities or support to make our professional or creative projects easily attainable. We end up creating our own opportunities, using our intelligence differently...
KR: We learned differently than them [our predecessors]; and we apply our knowledge differently...
HSW: We are inherently youthful in our attitude and it may contribute to why our age group [Gen X] is brave in our different approaches within the workplace, collaboratively or otherwise.

KR: Maybe we're more at ease when it comes to taking risks in collaboration or partnerships, because we are in the first generation that has not experienced a significant crisis, like WWII or Vietnam.

HSW: I think our generation had its own struggles that defined us...because we [the three of us] all grew up during the ‘80s; I grew up in a family that was shaped by Reagan's mismanagement, and we were shaken up by that era. The struggling Cleveland mentality that currently exists was affirmed during the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s; it is so close to all of us and been part of us for so long that we can't even define exactly what it is that went wrong.

KR: It's really not so much the Zeitgeist, as the failure in Vietnam was...

HSW: Pervasive pessimism in Cleveland's families was not established through events, but through a subtlety imbued in the fabric of our families; it crept into our lives without the punch of a big event, such as war. Really, it's an inability to identify the enemy; in this way, local businesses and individuals are asking the question, “Why are we defeated?” I think it has to do with a long, grinding away of our idealism, going back to the Reagan-Era.

Can our generation achieve different results professionally, given the current climate in Cleveland? Maybe at this point young professionals are becoming more committed to improving the region, through a different approach whereby we're emotionally invested in the outcome.
HSW: I don’t know if young people are going to change things. We know we want to see a difference, and it has to come from us. Isn’t our biggest fear becoming like our parents? I hope that Cleveland’s youth will be, as you put it, emotionally invested in the outcome of Cleveland’s future. But there are a lot of youth in Cleveland who are not on board; professionally they take on a more traditional managerial style. It takes a different thinker to question the leadership here in Cleveland, but who will support a new leadership's structure? And with structure, you must re-shape it in order to change it, not just look at it and allow things to stay the same. I think we wouldn’t be in this mess if we listened to more rock and roll and appreciated beauty more.

What do you hope to achieve at Progressive during your tenure?
HSW: A life with art is better than a life without art, and if we can enrich a life through it, we're veritable evangelists.

Interview and photos by Tisha-Nemeth Loomis

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