Company Profile / Boston, MA
TurningArt
The company that treats the empty wall as a problem worth solving - and pays local artists to solve it.
The company that treats the empty wall as a problem worth solving - and pays local artists to solve it.
Every office, clinic, and hotel lobby has the same underrated feature: a wall with nothing on it. TurningArt built a company around that blank rectangle - and around the artists who could fill it.
TurningArt is a Boston-based art advisory that runs turnkey art programs for organizations. Rather than sell a single painting and walk away, the company handles the whole arc of putting art in a space: consultation, curation, production, professional installation, and - for many clients - ongoing rotation. Businesses can lease and rotate their collection, purchase pieces outright, commission bespoke work, or blend all three.
The catalog behind it is large by any standard: more than 50,000 works sourced from a network of over 4,000 independent contemporary painters, photographers, sculptors, and mixed-media artists. Clients browse through an online gallery, and - in a detail that says a lot about how the company thinks - can put candidate pieces up to a team vote using custom software before anything is hung.
The pitch, first floated publicly in 2012, was memorable: a "Netflix-style art rental service," a "cure for empty walls." More than a decade on, the rental framing has matured into something broader. TurningArt now positions itself as a national platform pairing local artwork with national scale, serving corporate offices, healthcare systems, hospitality venues, real estate developments, institutions, and interior designers across the United States.
What makes the model durable is not the art itself but the logistics around it. Curating, producing, installing, and rotating collections across a national footprint is genuinely hard work - and it is the part most galleries and design firms would rather not own. TurningArt owns it end to end.
"We believe in the power of art to create a more inspired world." TurningArt company mission
TurningArt's clients share one thing: they have a lot of wall and not a lot of time to think about it. The company sells the thinking, the sourcing, and the ladder work.
Rotating programs that keep shared spaces feeling considered and give teams a say in what goes up.
Art chosen for healing environments - a focus deepened by the 2026 acquisition of H. Marion Art Consulting.
Lobby and guest-space collections that reflect a property's brand and its locale.
Art programs that support tenant retention and community-building across multi-location portfolios.
Higher education, cultural, and public spaces that want local work at scale.
A sourcing engine designers can lean on for projects without building an art practice in-house.
The empty wall isn't just an aesthetic gap. For a business it reads as indifference to a space; for an artist it's a market that's hard to reach. TurningArt sits in the middle of both.
The real product isn't any single program - it's the freedom to change your mind without changing vendors.
A flexible "artwork as a service" model. Curated collections are installed and refreshed at a client-chosen cadence, so walls never go stale. About 90% of rotating clients renew each year.
One-time acquisitions or bespoke commissions - including murals and site-specific installations - sourced from the artist network for spaces that want something made for them.
Owned pieces in signature areas, rotating work everywhere else. A budget-aware middle path between buying and leasing.
An online gallery for browsing 50,000+ works, paired with custom voting software that lets a whole team weigh in before installation - turning a committee fight into a feature.
Dedicated Art Advisors run consultation, curation, professional installation, rotation scheduling, and ongoing program management - clients stay as involved as they want to be.
A five-phase process, run by an Art Advisor from the first conversation to the last nail.
1 · Consultation - a one-on-one to map needs, space, and goals.
2 · Proposal - a complimentary, customized set of options and configurations.
3 · Program design - choose lease, purchase, or hybrid to fit the budget.
4 · Curation & feedback - browse the gallery; the team votes on selections.
5 · Install & rotate - professional handlers deliver, install, and refresh.
Then it repeats - on the schedule the client sets.
Plenty of firms will sell an office a few framed prints, and plenty of galleries represent artists. TurningArt's position is the seam between them. It combines the sourcing depth of a large marketplace with the hands-on service of a consultancy, then wraps both in software that makes selection collaborative.
The competitive field includes art-advisory and corporate-art specialists such as Indiewalls and NINE dot ARTS, consumer-leaning art platforms like Vango, and the many traditional consultants, galleries, and interior-design firms that source art in-house. What differentiates TurningArt is the combination of a very large catalog, a lease-and-rotate model with recurring revenue, and full ownership of the logistics.
That model also does something for the supply side. Independent and local artists rarely get direct access to hospital systems, hotel chains, or corporate campuses. TurningArt is the bridge - a distribution channel that can put a local painter's work on a wall several states away, and pay them through leasing, sales, and commissions.
It is, in the end, an unglamorous business built on a durable insight: the hard, boring parts - catalog, logistics, installation, artist payments - are exactly the parts worth owning.
"From curation to installation, TurningArt provides turnkey art programming." Company tagline
Fouad ElNaggar, Jason Gracilieri, and Jason Pavel launch TurningArt to make original art accessible and support local artists.
NextView Ventures leads a seed investment; David Beisel joins the board.
The company raises Series A funding, pitched publicly as a "cure for empty walls."
TurningArt expands into full turnkey art programming across corporate, healthcare, hospitality, and real estate sectors nationwide.
The long-tenured leader steps up to President before later becoming CEO.
TurningArt buys the Chicago-area firm to expand its national platform and healthcare design capabilities.
CEO Mari Silipo Cook, EDAC, joined TurningArt near its founding and rose over 13+ years - President first, then CEO. In an industry built on provenance, there's something fitting about a leader with that much of it.
"Whether you choose to purchase, commission, or lease & rotate your collection, we deliver concept-driven option sets to realize your vision."
Co-founder Fouad ElNaggar came to TurningArt from CBS Interactive, where he was an SVP, and earlier from venture firm Redpoint Ventures.
Product walkthroughs, interviews, and the online gallery. Links open on the respective platforms.
Find product demos, client stories, and interviews with the TurningArt team.
Demo · ProductA step-by-step look at the five-phase program, from consultation to rotation.
Blog · StoriesCase studies, on-site installs, and thinking on art in the built environment.