An art piece enhances a hallway at the law offices of Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

The art of placing art in the workspace isn’t lost on Kathi Strozza, office manager for Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, in the Broadway 655 building. “As a practical matter, we’ve learned not to put pieces in high traffic areas where they can be damaged,” she said. “But because we have art and not posters, we don’t worry so much about matching. It goes anywhere, with everything.”

In 1994, while the law firm was still part of Milberg, Weiss and various other partners, Strozza worked with a gallery to select about 65 pieces of art for the halls and conference rooms at One America Plaza. The firm spent about $94,000 on the art.

“When we moved last year, we had an insurance appraisal on it and found the collection had appreciated by 10 percent to 20 percent,” Strozza says.

Janet Van Arsdale, of the Art Collector in Old Town, has provided art and photography for hundreds of Downtown offices.

“It’s very different from the work we’ve done in private homes,” she says. “We have to make sure it suits a lot of people, and our clients want something pleasing and soothing.”

For Lerach Coughlin, that means mostly contemporary paintings and watercolors, with some sculpture.

“It’s mostly abstract, mostly colorful with some wonderful sculpture,” Strozza says. “You want to be able to please people but you also want to have art that has depth to it.”

The challenging pieces, the more evocative art often doesn’t hang well in business settings, Van Arsdale says.

“We’ve done banks and credit unions, the Marriotts and the Hilton Gaslamp, Manpower’s officers,” she says. “They are looking for upbeat, calm pieces that are accessible to many people — we call it transitional art.”

One of Van Arsdale’s most challenging corporate jobs was selecting art for a psychiatric facility.

“We spent hours making sure there were no empty chairs, no black shadowy images, no blood so the art wouldn’t distress the patients,” she recalls.But choosing easier pieces doesn’t guarantee that every one will accept them.

“There’s always a piece that sets someone off,” Van Arsdale says. “We just trade them out.”

At Lerach Coughlin, where Strozza chose more sophisticated pieces, there’s been plenty of reaction.

“People can really love or hate the things that we’ve put on the walls,” Strozza says. “We’ve had people say: do not hang that outside my door and we’ve had people try to take pieces with them when they left.”

— Marty Graham