ART, INCORPORATED

REDMOND, Washington - Leah Erickson let out an exasperated growl when she spotted a banner advertising “Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007” crookedly thumbtacked above a row of photographs framed and lighted with museumlike care.

Erickson, the archives manager for Microsoft Corp.’s art collection, enlisted a colleague to help yank it from the designated “art wall.” Earlier, the two hoisted a cardboard Windows Vista sign from in front of a painting and shoved lobby chairs away from a sculpture.

Hanging in the halls of Microsoft’s sprawling corporate campus are 4,500 pieces of contemporary art, some by such artists as Chuck Close, Takashi Murakami and Cindy Sherman. The software company spends just a sliver of its billions on art, so full-time curator Laura Matzer is working with what she’s got to gain respect for the collection in the art world, while balancing the quirks — like those ubiquitous posters — of working within a 76,500-person global corporation.

“I know my place here. Microsoft is first and foremost a software company,” Matzer said.

Microsoft’s art collection began in 1987 to brighten the walls of what was then a six-building campus. Before then, financial institutions that wanted to project a “forward-thinking” image were the main corporate collectors of art, according to Susan Abbott, a consultant and author of “Corporate Art Collecting.”

At Microsoft, a committee of employee volunteers oversaw new acquisitions until 1999, when the company hired its first full-time curator, New York gallery owner Michael Klein.

“It was time to turn the day-to-day operations to a professional team, like every other part of the Microsoft organization,” Klein said.

To keep costs down, he chose works by emerging and midcareer artists instead of established stars. To reflect the company’s global footprint, he bought objects from around the world, while continuing a tradition of supporting Northwest artists. He acquired photos, prints, paintings and sculpture, but ruled out the overtly political, religious and sexual to avoid offending employees from different cultures.

One highlight of his tenure was the commission of a two-story wall drawing by Sol LeWitt, whose works have been shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

When asked why Microsoft collects art, Klein answered, “Because they can. And they should. They are involved in culture. Technology is culture. And the art informs the culture.”

Matzer, who joined Microsoft’s staff from the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, emphasized that the company doesn’t buy art as an investment. She said the collection hasn’t been appraised as a whole, but did say that prints by Jacob Lawrence, a wellknown 20th century American painter who spent his later years in Seattle, had quadrupled in value since their purchase. Klein said the prints were originally bought for a few thousand dollars.

Microsoft, Matzer said, collects as a benefit to employees. Her aim is to spark creativity and to give workers, who spend so much time in the plastic environment of phones and computers, access to contrasting, tactile objects.

After succeeding Klein in 2004, Matzer continued to use his guidelines as she sought out new works. She’s also interested in artists who use technology in interesting ways. She recently bought “Easeful City,” by Japanese artist Satoru Aoyama, who rendered a decaying cityscape with delicate embroidery stitches.

When she’s not out scouting new artists, or at home reading about them, Matzer is focused on raising Microsoft’s profile in the art world. The collection’s first annual report is in the works, and she’s hoping to publish a catalog of the objects by 2010. She speaks at museum conferences and joined the year-old International Association of Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art.

But working inside Microsoft presents challenges most museum staff won’t encounter. For one thing, the geography is daunting: Matzer is in charge of curating mini-exhibitions in 80 buildings around the country plus in Japan and Denmark.