More Beautiful Than It Has to Be

Most art comes with a price tag. But that’s not always the best indicator of whether its value will endure over time. In this issue, we’re looking at the intangible qualities that affect the value of art. We spoke with hyperrealist painter Daniel Sprick, art critic and curator Michael Paglia, and art collector Robert Lewis, to get their take on the qualities that contribute to a work of art’s value and how collectors can learn to spot gems.

Understanding Why

For collector Robert Lewis, making art is mankind’s highest achievement. “It distinguishes us from other species,” he says. “We make art, but it has no utilitarian purpose. You understand food, clothing, and shelter; how do you understand art?”

Determining the value of art, he suggests, is also paradoxical. “In economics, you would say scarcity and supply and demand influence price, but is there scarcity of art? No, it is ubiquitous; there is no scarcity. And there’s great art that is unparalleled, but there’s no market because people are unfamiliar with it, so they have no interest. On the other hand, there are artists whose work is widely available in the marketplace and commands high prices. It’s almost as though, because it’s so common, it’s valuable.”

So, if we don’t need art, and its value doesn’t adhere to normal economics like, say, soybeans, how do we understand its value? Daniel Sprick takes an anthropological view: “It dawned on me that one of the functions of art has to do with fitness signals,” he suggests, meaning survival of the fittest. “Money factors in because it’s fungible and transferable, which makes buying art someone else’s fitness signal. In fact, if something doesn’t cost much, it’s not a very good fitness signal.” But he warns, artists shouldn’t spend time thinking about how collectors will perceive their work.

“I’m trying to make the best painting I can,” he says. “When you are trying to do your best work, no matter what it is, you’re maxed out, and that’s really what’s satisfying about it, as well as frustrating.”

Interestingly, some artists have gone to great lengths to shun the art market. Michael Paglia recalls the artist Roland Bernier, a Colorado pattern painter, for whom Paglia wrote a monograph and a documentary. “He did a body of work called Graffiti,” Paglia says. “Those paintings sold like hot cakes. But Roland said, ‘I must be a sellout if all these people want my work. I’m doing something wrong.’ He completely changed his vision and kept changing until he arrived at his Word pieces, which mostly didn’t sell. Finally, that proved to him that he was doing the right thing; he was not selling out to the man.”

Museums: Keepers of Mankind's Family Album

In a sense, museums are the gold standard. The first museum known to man dates to the sixth century BCE and the Neo-Babylonian high priestess Ennigaldi, who displayed ancient artifacts along with wall labels, which suggests that preserving history through art and objects is a key to the enduring value of art.

As an artist, Sprick has spent countless hours in museums and says it often feels like communing with spirits. “It’s a shared quest of artists throughout time, this insatiable desire to express themselves visually,” he says.

If museums play a vital role in value, the question becomes: Who makes the decision about what gets in? Let’s face it, as humans, we are fallible. And though we like to believe museum curators have hard-and-fast rules for collecting — and they do — but no matter how insulated one tries to be, popularity is a factor.

“Fame has a lot to do with value, much more than quality,” Sprick says. “A dealer told me that when I was young, and I didn’t want to hear it. But time proved it to be correct. So that’s why good things can be had for very little money, and some terrible things can be had for infinite amounts of money. That’s where connoisseurship comes in and learning to trust your own judgment.”

The conundrum of fame and its effect on value, Paglia adds, has even bigger repercussions. “If things aren’t worth very much,” he says, “they don’t represent anything in this exchange world. And when things aren’t worth very much, they’re also in danger. If we look at the history of art, when there’s a style that no one cares about, and it’s very cheap, that’s when things get thrown away, destroyed, and lost.”

Buy The Best: Skill Versus Artistry

As a collector, Lewis says he’s looking for superlative examples of an artist’s work. “It’s not merely the possession of the object; it’s the pursuit of the object and trying to understand what the next thing is I want to add to my collection. I spend a lot of time talking to artists, critics, curators, and collectors, trying to understand the most important examples of any artist’s work — the quintessential example, which is the piece you recognize from across a room. It’s the most compelling and unique work of art that distinguishes itself from all the others. To get an artist’s quintessential work, you first have to understand what that is.”

Here’s where collectors get turned around because, as Sprick notes, there are many ineffable attributes to art. “My criteria have to do with emotional impact,” he says. “I think skill is a requirement, but some lesser-skilled works can be more transcendent than some highly skilled works. The best bet is to disregard what’s in style; trends come and go. I tell artists not to pay attention to what’s commercially viable; do something that’s true to yourself. If it is meaningful to you, it will most likely be meaningful to others as well.”

Achieving a level of competence is a must for artists, just as it is wise for collectors to understand the qualities that indicate a work of art was crafted by skilled hands. But that’s the baseline.

The next level of discerning value is when an artist originates something new to the art world, in his or her own unique voice. “Like when you hear John Coltrane or Miles Davis,” Lewis says. “You immediately know who it is; they have created their own unique voice. And it’s thrilling to see an artist who, over the course of their career, can reinvent themselves. That level of creativity comes across when you stand before a work of art that is truly incredible. But it requires you to do the work. It will not simply present itself.”

What Is Beauty?

Many collectors have come to realize over time that what they loved early on no longer holds their attention. They realize that technique can be learned; originality, however, is rare. To understand why one thing is elevated to the level above another, Sprick says he’s developed a simple definition of art and beauty.

“Have you heard of Acheulean handaxes?” he asks. “They’re ancient stone tools, probably from 200,000 years ago, that were made more beautifully than they needed to be. What’s surprising about them is that they show no signs of wear and tear, while others of lesser quality show lots of wear, tear, and breakage — they were meant to be utilitarian. So, my definition of art is making something that’s more beautiful than it has to be. It doesn’t even have to be beautiful; it just has to be better than it needs to be. It could be sweeping the floor better than it really needs to be.”

Paglia echoes this sentiment: “I think it was Henri Focillon who said that we can be sure many of the things we have from antiquity are among the most beautiful because beautiful things tend to be preserved by people, generation after generation. It’s the idea that there is a universal perception of excellence that spans all ages.”

Which is why we are devastated when works such as the Buddhist temples in Afghanistan are destroyed. “And yet,” Sprick says, “those temples have no exchangeable value because they can’t be moved. They cannot be owned by anyone. But it’s shattering to us when they are destroyed.”

Ultimately, Sprick, Lewis, and Paglia agree that understanding value comes down to spending time learning to trust your own judgment and to think for yourself, and not be swayed by what’s fashionable at the time. “I think with most people, there’s an intuition that can be trusted,” Sprick says. “And there’s a surprising consensus about beauty; this is not an original thought of mine. Art needs to be well-crafted — not phenomenally crafted, but it needs to have a certain emotional resonance, and I think that is gathered intuitively.”

When you find those beautiful works, Lewis says, just buy them. “At this stage of life, I’ve begun to realize I’m not going to have a second chance. You know, money, when you die, will be worthless to you. But that experience of living with incredible objects will make your life so much richer.”

Curator and writer Rose Fredrick shares her extensive knowledge about the inner workings of the art market on her blog, The Incurable Optimist, at rosefredrick.com.

Telling The Story: What’s Saving Museums

According to the American Alliance of Museums, attendance five years post-pandemic is improving for many museums; however, most institutions are still struggling to bring back visitors and retain members, which is wreaking havoc on budgets. One theory is that people fell out of the habit of visiting museums. Another is that museums are competing with too many distractions, like smartphones. But the reality is that this downward trend began before the pandemic, which suggests something else is at play.

Growing up in Oklahoma City, Pat Fitzgerald spent a lot of time at the Cowboy Hall of Fame, now the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (NCWHM). “Back when I was a kid,” he says, “every third grader came here; it was mandatory.” Fitzgerald went more often than the average third grader because his father, who was an air traffic control instructor, loved the Cowboy Hall and would bring people from all over the world in to see it. Then, after taking in the art and artifacts, his dad would bring them back to the family home, where he’d parade out his two saddles, much to his wife’s chagrin. “He never owned a horse in his life,” Fitzgerald says, with a laugh. “But he loved the West.”

Pat Fitzgerald didn’t study art or even work at a museum. His career was corporate; he was a “change manager” at Apple, Disney, and Citibank. “I was brought in at a senior level because there was a change needed, and it was not going to be an easy change,” he says. When he got the call from a headhunter about the opening at the NCWHM for a new CEO, he was semi-retired and living in Oklahoma, doing some consulting. But he admits, “I suck at retirement.”

Still, before agreeing to talk to the museum’s leadership, he spent two weeks visiting, anonymously, like a secret shopper. “I just watched consumer behavior, how they engaged or didn’t,” he says, and adds, “I asked questions. I became a member.” What he saw at the end of those two weeks gave him an idea.

Fitzgerald is a tall, gregarious, dyed-in-the-wool Westerner who gives off the vibe of a kid given the keys to Disneyland, a place he did have plenty of access to at one point in his career. In his office hangs a reproduction of Albert Bierstadt’s Emigrants Crossing the Plains, which I can see on the Zoom screen just over his shoulder when he sits back in his chair, momentarily resting his hands on his desk before leaning forward again to launch into another great thing about the museum and his staff.

“I think museums have to look at new business models,” he says. “And they have to see if their business model meets their objectives. Do they have guests coming — guests who will be coming back in 10, 20 years? And has there been a consumer change? I think, if everybody’s honest with themselves, they’re going to say, ‘Wow, there’s a consumer change. We’re not getting the young guests in here like we used to.’”

While this might not seem like a big issue — the 40- to 70-year-olds still visit — if a museum isn’t engaging younger audiences, they’re not nurturing the next generation of members and donors. The NCWHM board knew they needed to rethink their approach, not because anything was terribly wrong, but it’s hard to ignore a worldwide sea change. And yet, when Fitzgerald was hired, there was concern over what he might do to the beloved establishment.

“When I first got here, everybody thought I was going to bring in all this technology,” he says. But he didn’t. Instead, he addressed a more pressing issue in a most refreshing way. “The very first thing I did was bring in humans because in our galleries nobody was telling a story. We trained gallery hosts; they had to take tests and know the real stories because otherwise, people were making things up.” After that, he started considering other ways to tell stories that would engage and excite more guests.

It's The Story

Fitzgerald is both a marketer and a storyteller. “I’m an ex-Disney person; I loved the movie industry because it allowed me to tell stories,” he says. And while, yes, museums are keepers of stories, Fitzgerald saw a disconnect. So, he studied guest behavior to determine what could enhance engagement, excitement, and education.

This approach was something Disney did exceedingly well, as did another company he worked for. “I learned a lot from Steve Jobs about behavior. He looked at things differently than we did in the rigid marketing world. Because his technology was so far advanced, he had to really look at the behavior of consumers, and he built things to solve a problem based on that behavior,” Fitzgerald says. “It’s very similar here.”

The big problem Fitzgerald spotted right away is an industry-wide issue: On average, 70 percent of a museum’s funding comes from donations. “That’s not a good business model; it’s not really sustainable. You’ve got to find a way to make this operationally sound on its own, number one; and number two, you’ve got to give people a reason to engage with your story.”

Ultimately, no one needed to panic about bringing a nontraditional boss into the museum mechanics. “We’re still a museum; we’re still about the art and artifacts,” he says. “That is the center of our story.”

Case in point is the museum’s headliner, the Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale. “The artists are phenomenal because they’re the best in Western art, and they all tell great stories through their art. When you have a great event like the Prix de West and the artists are here, do potential buyers just buy the art? Some do, but most people are buying into the story.”

And so, Fitzgerald the change maker didn’t upset the system; he simply brought it back to basics. “In this business,” he says, “it’s the story. I think many museums forget that. They think about the object, and everything around the object, and they’re putting the story third or fourth down the list of priorities when, in fact, it should be first.”

Heart And Soul

After taking a good 90 days to really learn the museum’s inner workings, Fitzgerald brought his team together to envision a refresh he calls the “Heart and Soul Initiative,” which he anticipates will take a total of six years to complete. “We’re doing a gallery a year, and we’ve done two already.”

If Fitzgerald is the catalyst, his curators are the true agents of change. Led by David Davis, chief curator and, as Fitzgerald says, “chief storyteller” and overseer of strategy and exhibition development, along with Johanna Bloom who specializes in Western art and artifacts; and Dr. Eric Singleton who holds a PhD in Ethnology and is an expert on Native American tribes and cowboy culture. “The biggest change we’re seeing is how we’re looking at our galleries. There is some technology used, but it’s still about art, artifacts, and telling the story. We’re blessed here because we have three amazing curators who are great storytellers, so they get it. They’re tremendous as is the exhibit group and people leading art sales. And it makes everybody look at this place in a different way.”

The key to instituting change, Fitzgerald says, is melding the old-school museum world and how curators were taught to present art and artifacts with the new ways people take in information. “Humans love to engage with humans. We call it the ‘lean-in effect.’ You’ll have a group of five or six listening to a curator or gallery host telling them about a wonderful piece of art. And next thing, there are 10 people around that person, leaning in because they want to hear.”

Trail Makers Pave The Way

As for the “how” of telling those stories, Fitzgerald says that they, like most museums, only show a small fraction of their entire collection, and what they did show was presented in a traditional way. “We have 13 percent of our art and artifacts up, and 87 percent is in our vault. It’s great to have the best things up, but we had to think about the best rotation of those things, and how to tell a new story and engage with that story,” he says. To do this, he challenged his curators to rethink how they present art and objects, which meant bringing some phenomenal objects out of storage.

“We’re calling it ‘Trail Markers,’” Fitzgerald says, explaining that now galleries in the museum are centered around themes that tell broader stories of the West by combining art and objects from across mediums. “We create this big collective to tell a much richer, more cohesive story. And by doing that, we don’t have to write as much text either, because it’s logical.”

And they can tell many stories in their 220,000-square-foot museum space. Now, instead of walls of paintings, you might also see a pair of spurs and a gun nearby, as well as clothing to tell a more robust story. Currently, the new galleries focus on telling the story of Western expansion, using these “Trail Markers” as the vehicle that pulls visitors through various eras toward a glorious, towering Bierstadt landscape at the end. “It looks like this magical window that you want to get to, but you’ve got to go through these other stories first. And it’s all logical because it explains through the art and artifacts the how, what, and when people were migrating west and what they encountered on their journey.”

A Little Disney Is A Good Thing

Fitzgerald’s fresh approach includes folding in people from different walks of life who bring skills not traditionally considered for museum jobs, such as tourism and sports entertainment. And then there’s Bob Miller. “He’s our ‘Imagineer.’ He worked at Disney, Apple, Nokia, and Boeing. He was an engineer who worked on really great projects and developed solid solutions,” Fitzgerald says.

Which gets us to the Disney part of this revamp. A few years ago, Fitzgerald and his wife went to an immersive Van Gogh experience, and a lightbulb went off. Not long after, that headhunter called to ask if he would apply for the CEO position at the NCWHM. After taking two weeks to really think through what was possible, he threw his hat in the ring by presenting his take on where he believed museums were going. “I presented to them the impact of storytelling through these immersive stories and technology and how new, young, and older audiences all were flocking to this newer storytelling technique.”

What Fitzgerald was presenting was more than glitz. And while some people thought he was trying to justify his Disney sensibility — a comment that doesn’t bother him one bit — he was really looking at static presentation, from the lighting to sound, and introducing some fairly dynamic tech to enhance the experience. “It was like a library in here and at many museums,” he recalls. “You couldn’t have sound, and I thought, ‘My gosh, folks, what are we doing here?’ Sound doesn’t distract; it brings emotion and enhances the experience.”

So, while his curators were reimagining how to present these stories, Fitzgerald worked with Lighthouse, the outfit behind Immersive Van Gogh, to create The Cowboy: An Immersive Journey. “It’s a 40-minute show, written by our curators and a few of us, and narrated by Tom Selleck,” he says. “The biggest reason our younger audience didn’t see themselves here was because they didn’t see the old Western movies and they didn’t see any artists they knew. We needed to change that and also to bring in new storytelling techniques to attract new audiences.” And yes, it did cost a pretty penny to produce, but the museum owns the intellectual property and is set to travel The Cowboy: An Immersive Journey around the world, to tell their story and generate revenue, which they earn from every ticket sold. Now that’s thinking outside the box.

The biggest challenge they faced: not ostracizing their core audience. Turns out everyone loves to be awash in art: Their attendance numbers more than doubled since January’s launch of The Cowboy, as have revenues.

Fitzgerald says he plans to stay six or seven years, then turn things over to the next visionary. “I’ll probably retire for good after that.” But for now, he can’t wait to get into the office. “It’s not that we haven’t made some mistakes or tried some things that didn’t work,” he says. “We have. But for me, the biggest thing is, if you are not evolving, you are slowly going extinct.”

Curator and writer Rose Fredrick shares her extensive knowledge about the inner workings of the art market on her blog, The Incurable Optimist, at rosefredrick.com.

Hidden Hazards in Museum Collections

On a recent visit to a museum in the Southwest, I toured their collections, which included a long-term loan of Western saddles, bridles, and spurs. The museum staff member guiding the tour mentioned that the saddles had recently been frozen as part of the museum’s pest management protocol, then motioned for the group to continue on. I raised my hand. “Your what protocol?”

Apparently, and this will be no surprise to the equestrians out there, saddles harbor bugs. So, before those minuscule pests could ride into the museum where they would discover loads of new food sources — textiles, paper, canvas, wood, and other organic materials — they and their host saddles were wrapped and frozen (-30°C to -40°C) in specially designed trucks for several days to weeks. The wrapping and freezing process kills not only the bugs but their eggs and larvae, too. Problem solved. Sort of.

Here’s the thing: Bugs are the tip of the museum-sized iceberg. Mold is and has been an ongoing struggle, especially in old, drafty museums in Europe. These are issues no one wants to talk about, which makes matters worse. And because of the stigma of discussing these pesky problems, another troubling issue has come to light.

Enter textile conservator Paulette Reading. For 20 years, Reading has maintained a private practice in Denver, working primarily with institutions that don’t have a staff of conservators, which is the majority of them. Over that time, she has become an outspoken advocate for the proper conservation and handling of historic collections. But not for the reason you might think.

When The Cure Is The Problem

A decade into her career, Reading began developing skin sensitivities. What she discovered brought her to the intersection of art, science, and occupational health — a place that has defined her work ever since.

“Historic textiles are quite toxic,” she says plainly, “whether from applied pesticides such as arsenic and mercury used from the 19th into the 20th century, or from the way they were manufactured.” Century-old silk gowns, weighted textiles treated with heavy metal salts, and books with deep green cloth binding, she explains, were often made with toxic materials that didn’t necessarily pose a problem at the time because the chemicals were bound into the fibers.

But as those textiles age, they get powdery; that’s when they present a hazard that Reading likens to lead paint in homes. “If it’s sealed,” she says, “it doesn’t necessarily pose a problem. When it starts flaking, then you’ve got an issue.”

A Long and Complicated History

When I spoke with Reading about pests and mold in museum collections, she was quick to point out that this isn’t an isolated issue; it’s endemic. As is the fact that, until the mid-20th century, the accepted practice for killing infestations was fumigation, and the substances used closely tracked what the agricultural industry was developing for field use.

Arsenic compounds, mercury-based treatments, and later organic pesticides, including DDT, were used in museum storage rooms and private homes alike. “This was a widespread practice,” Reading says, noting that in the 1930s, noxious sprays developed for home use to kill moths and other invasive insects were heavily advertised, often depicting frantic housewives holding up moth-eaten coats. “That’s why it’s ubiquitous,” Reading says.

Today, museums have integrated pest management systems that include monitoring, isolation, freezing, and anoxic treatment. But the problem, Reading stresses, is that the elemental poisons applied long ago — arsenic, mercury, and the like — don’t degrade. “They are actual elements. They’re not going anywhere.”

Who Is Really At Risk?

To be clear, there’s no risk for museum visitors. “Even if they’re not aware of some of the problems, visitors aren’t allowed to touch things,” Reading says. “It’s more the staff and people who are handling collections.” And she says, “You’re probably breathing in more poisons waiting for a bus or breathing the air after a wildfire.” Well, that’s a relief.

The story is different for people whose work or hobby involves regular hands-on contact with historic objects. Dealers, conservators, museum collections staff, registrars, and dedicated collectors face cumulative exposure in a way that a casual visitor does not. Reading describes the moment she understood this personally: “I started working on a project — not wearing gloves — and later found out it had been completely covered in arsenic. It was very upsetting to learn that I was handling something at work, and then headed home, stopping to pick up my kids from daycare.”

Science Isn't Helping

One of the persistent challenges is institutional reluctance to discuss the problem openly. The fear is understandable: Publicity about toxic collections might make other institutions reluctant to lend to your museum or host traveling shows, plus it will alarm the public, which might prompt hasty deaccessioning and sensational headlines.

Disposing of objects that could be safely managed is part of what Reading hopes to prevent through education. “I think it’s better to have more knowledge,” she says. “People who work with collections every day might have a lot of exposure. Even if, compared to industrial jobs or working in mines, the levels are very low; there’s no reason we shouldn’t protect ourselves when we know it’s there.” She takes a breath and adds, “I think it’s an ethical problem not to make this common knowledge.”

Leading Reform

While there are now effective and safer protocols for eliminating pests and mold in museum collections, there isn’t yet a single handbook for addressing toxic hazards in historic collections. Thankfully, a vital collaboration is making headway: the Museum and Cultural Heritage Industry Working Group, housed within the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). Founded in 2017 by Kathryn Makos, an industrial hygienist who spent her career at the Smithsonian, the AIHA is developing a database of industrial hygienists specifically familiar with cultural property.

Another resource Reading recommends is Old Poisons, New Problems by Dr. Nancy Odegaard. An essential reference for conservators, this publication has been in print for roughly two decades, and yet, Reading says, clearly frustrated, it has not become standard knowledge across the field.

She also points to the Poison Book Project under the direction of Dr. Melissa Tedone. Based at the University of Delaware’s Winterthur program, the project has made a specific hazard visible: arsenic-based green dyes used in 19th-century bookbindings. “Studies indicate that arsenic in bookbindings is less an airborne problem,” she explains. “It’s more of a handling issue.” Thankfully, the Poison Book Project’s work has drawn attention beyond the museum community to a hazard that affects libraries, rare book dealers, and antique collectors alike.

For pest management, Reading directs everyone, from major institutions to home collectors, to the website: museumpests.net. There you will find resources applicable to both museum protocols and household collections.

Reading’s emphatic plea to all: “Do not use mothballs. They’re toxic. It’s a carcinogen. It’s not good for us, it’s not good for the objects, and they smell bad. And most people aren’t using them correctly anyway.”

Practical Steps For Collectors

For those who own or are acquiring historic organic objects, Reading’s guidance is straightforward. Start with a working assumption of contamination for any organic historic textiles, leather, saddles, taxidermy, books, wooden artifacts, particularly those that predate the mid-20th century. This doesn’t mean panic or disposal. It means awareness and basic precaution.

For anything entering your space, the first step is isolation. Reading freezes every incoming object in her studio before examining it, as a precaution against pest transfer. For a private collector, this may not be feasible, and many objects may be damaged by freezing. The best approach is to wear gloves and a mask, and open questionable finds in a garage where you can monitor them for signs of damage, such as frass (insect droppings), webbing, holes, or fine debris.

“And try to keep things contained so as not to cross-contaminate,” Reading warns. The goal here isn’t to make handling impossible but to create a barrier between uncertain hazards and skin or airways.

While visible pest damage may sound awful, Reading says it’s a good sign. “That means the object might not have been treated with toxic pesticides.” But she warns, “If you have an 1890 weaving with absolutely zero damage, I might be suspicious of that.” The takeaway isn’t that damage is reassuring, but that perfect condition in a very old textile should be treated with care.

Of the latest trend, a resurgence of interest in Victorian and early 20th-century fashion, Reading is direct: “I have heard people are buying historic garments and wearing them. That’s problematic without knowing whether a Victorian-era textile was treated with pesticides, had more toxic dyes, or was dirty. A lot of that sooty stuff on textiles contains lead from its environment.” Cleaning, she warns, is not a simple fix: Such garments are typically too fragile for dry cleaning, which also doesn’t reliably remove toxins and introduces its own chemical hazards. This is a situation for a conservator.

The Perspective Worth Keeping

Reading is careful not to leave the impression that historic collections are uniformly dangerous or that engagement with them requires hazmat protocols. The goal of her work and the goal of the conservators, industrial hygienists, museum professionals, and researchers building out this field is preservation and continued access, not avoidance.

“There are affordable, practical ways of handling and preserving objects,” she says. “And there are safe ways to protect yourself, if you know the hazards and have the resources.”

That last point is key. The knowledge exists. The resources exist. The professional networks exist. What the museum world is still catching up on is getting this information out of the specialized corners of the conservation field and into the hands of the dealers, collectors, and museum volunteers who need it most.

“My mission,” Reading says, “is to make this common knowledge.”

RESOURCES

American Institute for Conservation (AIC) — Find a Conservator directory; Health and Safety Network working group. culturalheritage.org

AIHA Museum and Cultural Heritage Industry Working Group — Database of industrial hygienists familiar with cultural property. aiha.org

Old Poisons, New Problems by Dr. Nancy Odegaard — The essential reference on contaminated collections. Available through museum booksellers and Amazon.

The Poison Book Project — University of Delaware / Winterthur; research on arsenic in historic bookbindings. Search “Poison Book Project Winterthur” for current resources and publications.

museumpests.net — Integrated pest management resources for institutions and home collectors; includes identification guides, protocols, and links to scholarly literature.

Connecting to Collections Care — Free webinars and guidelines for collections care across a range of object types. connectingtocollections.org

Conserve O Grams — National Park Service technical bulletins on collections care, freely available online.

WPA: Preserving a Fading Legacy

How to save WPA murals in buildings slated for sale or demolition

Recently, I received an email with the subject line: “Saving my mom’s WPA mural….” In it, Jenne Currie, the daughter of Ethel Magafan and niece of Ethel’s twin sister, Jenne, wrote that the government is fast-tracking the sale of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C. Described by experts as the “Sistine Chapel of the New Deal,” it features murals and bas relief sculptures that were commissioned by the federal government during the Great Depression; her mother and aunt’s mural is among them.

Designed to serve as the headquarters of the newly established Social Security Administration, the 85-year-old Cohen Building features Classicism-style architecture with Egyptian Revival and Art Deco influences.

But for all its grandeur, its million square feet of office space was never occupied by the Social Security Administration, and its long-term tenant, Voice of America, couldn’t afford to maintain the massive structure, which includes some 1,800 square feet of public art.

Currie writes, “It is believed that since the building is so large and in poor condition, any new owner would be hard-pressed to have the funds to restore it. It could easily be demolished.”

If that happens, those stunning murals painted as frescoes on the walls by the Magafan sisters, as well as murals by Ben Shahn, Phillip Guston, and Seymore Fogel, would also be destroyed because there is no feasible way to remove them.

Living New Deal

Enter Mary Okin and the Living New Deal (LND), a small nonprofit with a national presence. The LND has spent the last two decades painstakingly documenting and mapping New Deal projects across the country and making that information available to the public on their website livingnewdeal.org/.

“We’ve become a kind of encyclopedia of the New Deal,” says Okin of the more than 19,000 New Deal public works sites they have identified nationally. “We have volunteers all across the country who look for New Deal sites in their communities. And not just federal agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., or post offices and schools with important artworks. We document sidewalks, bridges, and sewer systems built through New Deal programs in urban centers and small rural towns alike. Our goal is to teach people about the New Deal’s forgotten impacts on the U.S. built environment.”

Who Will Remember

As the aging generation that grew up during the New Deal passes away, Okin worries that people don’t realize how much was created under its auspices. There’s a good reason for this: New Deal public works were never fully documented or mapped.

It’s estimated that more than 200,000 works of art alone were created in the 1930s; to go back and document everything is daunting, albeit vital.

“Understanding the New Deal’s impact on American society and that moment in time when the government really worked for the people,” Okin believes, “is a model for present and future public policy and good government.”

In 21st-century hindsight, we may find fault with New Deal policies, but without question, the New Deal changed the course of our country and strengthened America’s position in the art world. “The American government became the world’s leading supporter of contemporary art during this decade, at a time when Europe was devolving into another world war, and many countries were persecuting or suppressing artists, some of whom fled to our shores,” Okin says. “For the first time in American history, the government funded both established and up-and-coming artists alike. FDR’s administration viewed visual, performing, literary, and other artists as essential workers. It was really extraordinary.”

When We Invested in Art: The WPA

Most people know the term “WPA art,” but it refers to just one of several New Deal art programs meant to provide jobs for artists and bring art, theater, music, literature, and more to the American people. After the success of the pilot program, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which operated from 1933 to 1934 and provided weekly salaries to artists for creating murals, easel paintings, and sculptures, the federal government started the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Art in 1934, which ran until 1943. This program awarded commissions to artists for new federal buildings through juried competitions, including funding for the Cohen Building.

There was also the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP), from 1935 to 1938, and the Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP), from 1935 to 1943, which was the largest arts program and employed artists based on need, resulting in thousands of works of art. Additionally, other federal agencies like the National Park Service also hired artists.

Though popular, the New Deal program ended in 1943 without a plan for managing the enormous amount of art produced. In 1949, a new federal agency, the US General Services Administration (GSA), was established to oversee federal property. It became the custodian of the New Deal and other federally-owned architecture and art. By then, however, data on New Deal art and its locations were scattered or unavailable.

Treasure Hunt

“There have been many losses because records of these accomplishments were left haphazardly in various places at the end of the projects,” Okin explains. “The government was primarily interested in putting people to work and didn’t treat New Deal work as part of an important art collection requiring resources for management and upkeep.”

Laws do exist to protect New Deal art and architecture. The Cohen Building, for instance, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is safeguarded by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), which requires a formal review process involving relevant federal agencies, preservationists, and outside groups and stakeholders, such as the children of the artists or organizations like the Living New Deal.

These groups can advocate for the inclusion of historic preservation covenants in any sale agreement transferring ownership to private parties. “That process of review has to happen,” Okin says, “but it does not guarantee historic preservation, which was kind of a shock to me. The law implies a sense of decency among leaders of the government to not sell off national treasures, but it doesn’t mandate preservation.”

To raise awareness of the impending threats to the Cohen Building, the Living New Deal staff started a Change.org petition (see sidebar) that asks the GSA and Congress to save the building or mandate that a buyer save its art. “But really,” Okin says, “the best mechanism for change is public concern, citizens coming together and saying, ‘This building is precious; it’s our national heritage, we want it to be saved.’”

Okin and her organization have warmed up to the idea that selling the Cohen building might not be the worst option, especially if a civic-minded real estate developer can help with historic preservation. “They might be better caretakers of a former federal building,” says Okin, “including providing access to the works of art.” Several ideas have been floated for renovating the Cohen Building, such as transforming it into a university campus or a mixed-use space managed by the Smithsonian or the Library of Congress, with living spaces, grocery, pharmacy, and shops on the main floor.

Is the Cost Worth It?

But that brings us back to the original question: Why is saving New Deal art and architecture so important when there are other things that need to be tended to? Here Okin cites research that suggests art strengthens democracies by exposing people to other ideas and points of view.

“You recognize another person’s humanity,” she says. “And that opens up your heart and taps into your empathy, even if you disagree strongly.”

And then she recalled seeing a young couple at a museum in Sacramento where a show of New Deal paintings were on display. ”The girlfriend had clearly dragged him to the museum on a date; he looked somewhat bored and miserable. But as he turned a corner, he had this ‘wow’ experience standing in front of a painting of a welder.

He said, ‘Oh my God, that looks like my dad.’” Okin recalls. “The art spoke to him. It was a painting of a working-class person, sort of like he was. I think that’s the case for a lot of New Deal art: It’s not created for an elite audience of critics and collectors but for ordinary citizens. That’s a powerful inheritance from the New Deal and a lesson in the strength of paying attention to the lives of humble workers and rural communities.”

For more information about saving the Wilbur J. Cohen Building and other New Deal Art and Architecture

Visit livingnewdeal.org/ for a current map of New Deal projects across the country, as well as news and in-depth research on New Deal era art.

Think you’ve located New Deal art that should be documented? Please contact the Office of the Inspector General for the GSA, https://www.gsaig.gov/wpa-artwork-gallery.

Want to make your voice heard? Consider signing the petition to save the Cohen Building and its art, Change.org.

And to learn more about the Cohen Building art, visit npr.org, thehill.com/opinion/, The Architect’s Newspaper archpaper.com/2025, and tune into the D.C. City Cast podcast https://dc.citycast.fm/podcasts/.

How Museum Curators Can Make You a Better Collector

There are no guarantees in the world of art collecting, but keeping an eye on your favorite museum curators and what they are collecting and displaying may be one of the best stamps of approval you can get.

Artists often do some odd things that can appear counterintuitive or even self-destructive—like inviting you over to see their latest work, then refusing to sell it to you. This isn’t a ploy to get you to pay more (though it might be). More likely, it’s because they believe the work in question is a pinnacle piece; the last thing they want is for it to disappear into someone’s private collection.

Not all artists do this. You tend to see it more with well-established artists who know their legacy depends on placing work in museum collections. The collector’s conundrum: these are the works of art you want to add to your collection because they have the best potential to grow in value over time, and will be coveted by museums, which means you can earn provenance by loaning them for major exhibits and can use them for donations should you need a tax write-off.

Learning to identify and acquire these precious works, whether for yourself or your favorite museum, is what we’re exploring in this issue. Essentially, to reach this level of collecting, you need to think like a museum curator. We spoke with Laura Fry, Vice President of Curatorial Affairs at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, and Dakota Hoska, Curator of Native American and Global Indigenous Art for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to gather some insights.

What's So Special About Museum Curators?

“I give this talk to docents called What Does a Curator Do?” says Laura Fry. “Curator has become such a buzzword—even Starbucks “curates” your coffee—that it’s led to an oversimplification of the word to mean someone who just buys stuff they like. But the role brings connoisseurship to the museum and the public. Curators bring specific expertise and technical knowledge of art, as well as storytelling and how to link the art to the museum on the whole.”

Nothing against baristas, but museum curators are the real deal. These women and men hold a minimum of a master’s degree in art history, museum studies, or a related field, and most possess a Ph.D. But don’t be nervous around them; curators love to discuss their latest research, exhibition ideas, or new discoveries in art preservation and collections management. Some curators speak multiple languages, and many have vast institutional knowledge of art and objects within their specialty. Best of all, they tend to know where the very best art and objects reside in collections around the world—if you’re lucky, you might get to join them on one of these trips into private collections.

Museum Worthy

When it comes to acquiring art, museum curators and private art collectors live on opposite sides of the same coin. When acquiring art for museums, curators draw on their vast expertise to strengthen a collection by filling in missing works of art that help tell a bigger story. Private collectors would be wise to examine their own collection with a critical eye and ask: What is missing? What would strengthen the story I’m trying to tell? For example, adding paintings by living artists to a collection of works by deceased artists can help expand the conversation by offering another perspective.

When it comes to getting their work into museums, lots of artists will tell you that museum curators are the gatekeepers of the art world—and they don’t necessarily say this with admiration. Because getting art in a museum collection is a significant boost to an artist’s career (think of it as the Michelin star rating of the art world), collectors should pay attention to what museums are collecting and exhibiting.

Having said that, museum curators don’t relish the idea of being gatekeepers or tastemakers. And post-COVID, Fry says museums want to retire that idea. “I think the museum world gained this reputation as gatekeepers, but more recently, we are trying to dismantle that notion and create ways people can access art through programming, workshops for people of all ages, even by changing what we have in the gift shop.”

So, what makes a work of art worthy of being collected by a museum? “People always ask this question, but there is no one right answer,” Fry says. “Art goes through trends, even historical art. What makes something museum-worthy is nuanced. And, too, we could be offered the most amazing work of art by an incredible artist, but if it doesn’t fit our mission, or we already have that area covered, we won’t take it.”

Dakota Hoska, echoes Fry’s comment and adds, “I believe that there are works that have something special, but undefinable. There’s something so innately remarkable about them that many people can immediately recognize their importance. Although I have been a curator for many years, this secret ingredient is often elusive to me and my colleagues.”

Defining the Undefinable

You may not care if your collection is museum-worthy or gains value over time. But, still, it might not hurt to stand back and apply a curator’s logic to big purchases.

Front and center is the museum’s mission. Defining and applying a mission or objective to your private collection is a great way to guide future purchases. Hoska, who is Indigenous, says that her job as curator means acquiring art that helps others understand the interconnectedness of all people, not just in America, but globally. So, instead of narrowing the scope, Hoska will be considering art across North American indigenous communities, including Canada, since tribes and nations freely crossed today’s borders.

“To do this,” she says, “I will rely heavily on the opinions and insights of Indigenous people around this country and into Canada. Collectively, we are now at the National Gallery of Art. I may be the point person for this collection, but I’m just the prow of the boat. Indigenous people and the wider community are the ones pushing this point forward with their weight and knowledge.”

Make a Plan

Establishing a personal plan and vision for your collection may sound excessive, but it can serve two purposes simultaneously: bring focus and help you cull works that no longer serve that focus.

Museum plans often start by reflecting on their mission and what distinguishes them from other museums. For a personal collection, this involves defining your aesthetic and interests. When Fry took over curatorial duties at the Eiteljorg last year, she brought extensive knowledge of Western American art and history, leading her to consider what makes something “Western” and what the Eiteljorg can uniquely contribute to the conversation. “At one time,” Fry says, “Indiana was one of the westernmost states. So, the museum’s focus on art of the American West can also connect to the story of Indiana.”

Sharing that bigger story can be challenging. At the National Gallery, Hoska is considering how to elevate foundational Indigenous artists from the 1900s onward and how collecting their works will complement the rest of the collection, sparking visitors’ curiosity and encouraging them to learn more about the Indigenous experience. “The National Gallery of Art has a reputation of absolute excellence,” she says. “So, keeping that in mind as I’m curating this collection will be a primary focus.”

Digging Deeper

“Lead storyteller” would be a fitting subtitle for any curator. One question Hoska often asks before proposing acquisitions is: Does the work tell a lasting story that will appeal to people now and well into the future? “I don’t mean the work itself will be narrative,” she says, “but it may be indicative of something that we can or should collectively remember, learn from, or grow from as humans.”

The next question—and this goes back to those things you can’t buy—is whether a piece is a major or pivotal work by that artist. “The work should be exemplary for what it is trying to say and/or for the artistic movement it represents,” Hoska explains. “For instance, Kiowa people are known for the simple elegance of their beadwork and their precision. If I were to collect a historic Kiowa piece, I would not only look for it to be beautiful or eye-catching, but I would also look for it to be indicative of the excellence of Kiowa historic beadwork. On the other hand, if I were looking at an artist who was working to refute preciousness, I would be looking for them to do that in an innovative and exceptional manner.”

And part of what makes a work exceptional is its ability to push boundaries and challenge visitors to think critically and ask questions. “If an artist is settled into one thing and repeats that ad nauseam,” Hoska says, “I am less interested than when an artist continues to push themselves. I think this is a good indicator of a great artist. That’s not to say everything they make will be great, but that they are not afraid to push the boundary in some way.”

Direct Line

Want a direct line to your favorite curator? Visit museums that collect art you are also passionate about. Then become and member and find out if they have a collections support group you can join. Be prepared to pony up some serious cash for the privilege of joining these groups. But if you’re a serious collector and want to minimize mistakes when collecting, this kind of access—which includes behind-the-scenes tours, private dinners, and discussions about art and artists the curator wishes to add—is worth every penny. Plus, you get to help your favorite museum preserve a slice of modern life, which will one day be history.

As always, thank you for reading! If you like this story, check out some of these stories:

More Beautiful Than It Has to Be

July 30, 2026 No Comments

Most art comes with a price tag. But that’s not always the best indicator of whether its value will endure over

Telling The Story: What’s Saving Museums

July 30, 2026 No Comments

According to the American Alliance of Museums, attendance five years post-pandemic is improving for many museums; however, most institutions are still struggling

Hidden Hazards in Museum Collections

July 30, 2026 No Comments

On a recent visit to a museum in the Southwest, I toured their collections, which included a long-term loan of

The Art Heist

In 1985, the Harwood Foundation, in Taos, New Mexico, now the Harwood Museum of Art, served a dual purpose as the town’s museum and library. Throughout the adobe building’s two floors, paintings by Taos Society artists hung beneath the vigas on lime washed plaster walls. Librarian Tracy McCallum’s desk was situated on the first floor with a clear sightline to the Harwood’s entrance. On a mild spring afternoon in March, he was there, at his desk, when a woman requested a wheelchair and his assistance getting up the old elevator to the second floor. McCallum obliged, showed her around and then helped her back downstairs on the elevator. He then returned to his desk. There were many visitors that day, none of whom McCallum later recalled as standing out, except for one: the man in the long black raincoat.

Near closing time, David Caffey, the Harwood’s director at the time, walked upstairs for a final check, stepped into the gallery and saw immediately that there, on the north wall, was a blank space where a painting had been. He turned around and saw, to the south, the bottom leg of the frame still stuck to the wall, but no painting.

In the police report, McCallum recalled how the woman in the wheelchair needed his help and then later, how an Anglo male approximately 40 to 50 years old, slightly bald, approximately 5’8” wearing a long black raincoat looked at him then quickly turned and exited the museum. That man stood out, McCallum said, because he walked with his hands in his coat pockets, as if he were holding something underneath.

Harwood curator David Witt was not in his office that day; ironically, he was in Santa Fe attending a seminar on museum security. Witt didn’t learn of the theft until he got back that evening. How could someone walk in and take two works of art off the walls in broad daylight, and no one noticed? Witt notified the FBI the next day, and contacted galleries, dealers, and art associations letting them know of the theft. For years after, Witt scanned auction catalogues in hopes that “Oklahoma Cheyenne,” c. 1915 by Joseph Sharp and “Aspens,” c. 1932 by Victor Higgins would turn up, but they never did, at least, not during his tenure.

Six months after the Sharp and Higgins were stolen, Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-Ocher” was cut out of its frame where it hung in the University of Arizona Museum of Art gallery and smuggled out of the museum in broad daylight. It was the day after Thanksgiving and the museum was quiet, except for the woman who chatted with the staff and the man in a black raincoat.

Art Theft and the Black Market

It is estimated that some 50,000 works of art are stolen each year fueling the nearly $8 billion black market for stolen art. You might think that these crimes are done for financial gain—and many are. But Robert Wittman, founder of the FBI Art Crime Team, believes there are three types of art thieves. The first commit a theft of opportunity; basically, they’re shoplifters. The second kind steals for money, and these thieves make up the lion’s share. But then there are the people who steal for themselves.

“They feel like, since they care about it, they are entitled to have these pieces,” he said in the documentary, The Thief Collector. “They’re the most dangerous. And they’re the hardest to capture.” Wittman says these people are so difficult to track down because once they have the art, they hide it and keep it purely for their own enjoyment. “And those things,” he says, “go away for many years before they come back.”

But I Didn't Know

“Nemo dat quod non habet” is a handy Latin phrase you might want to remember when buying art at auction or from someone you don’t know all that well, like the guy offering a great deal on a Rembrandt in the trunk of his car. Also known as the “Nemo dat” rule, it translates to “no one can give what they do not have.” In other words, you can’t own stolen art no matter how much you pay for it.

Don’t panic if you unwittingly buy something that was stolen, which, given the staggering number of objects stolen each year, might be easier than you think. You’re not in trouble unless, however, you refuse to return the stolen goods. This falls under the “Demand and Refusal Rule.” When and how this rule is applied can vary from state to state, but essentially, the clock on returning stolen art starts when the true owner discovers its whereabouts.

As you might expect, there are lots of gray areas that influence the final outcome in these cases. For example, did the person whose art was stolen file a police report? Did they notify the FBI, and did they list the stolen art on international loss registries?

Sounding the Alarm

When the Sharp and Higgins were pilfered from the Harwood, Juniper Leherissey, executive director of the museum, says, “David Witt used his extensive list of galleries, museums, and other art entities. There was a large effort within our regional network of museums and galleries to notify them of the lost works, as well as all the formal channels: letters to Interpol, the art loss registry, and others, so we have all that documentation.”

But that was forty years ago, and even Leherissey who grew up in Taos, wasn’t aware that among the 6,500 works of art in the Harwood collection, two were missing. And, interestingly, the insurance company the museum worked with back then has gone out of business. But still, the trail had been established.

As collectors, you may be wondering what happens if you do buy stolen art, pay for it, and then, weeks or even years later, the FBI gives you a call. We talk a lot about provenance in this column. Here’s a nightmare scenario that is an excellent reason why collectors need to take provenance seriously and double check anything that gives you pause. Look for records of who the original owner was and all the subsequent owners, museum exhibitions, etc., that provide important assurances that the piece you’re interested in can be linked to honest brokers.

Beyond that, only work with honest dealers and auction houses. These folks should be looking out for you by verifying provenance, though there are plenty of examples where dubious provenance was either glossed over or blatantly covered up.

A Strange Email, an Amateur Sleuth, and the Documentary

On the thirtieth anniversary of the theft of the de Kooning, the University of Arizona Art Museum curated an exhibit that featured the empty frame from which the painting was sliced out. Wall text gave details of the heist and publicity of the show renewed interest in the crime, including that of amateur sleuth, Lou Schacter, a retired corporate consultant who enjoyed researching art crimes. He was intrigued by the de Kooning heist and visited the museum in 2014, thinking he would dive into that crime soon. The de Kooning, however, surfaced before Schacter got to it.

Enter Rita and Jerome Alter, former schoolteachers who lived a quiet life in Cliff, New Mexico. They owned a modest home and spent their retirement years traveling to far flung places. At family gatherings, they shared photos and stories of their latest trips, and in their home, they displayed mementos such as weavings, small sculptures, and paintings collected along the way. Jerome died in 2012; Rita in 2017. Their estate was left to relatives who, overwhelmed by the volume of things the couple owned, decided to donate some of it to a local garden club and sell the rest, part and parcel, to an antique shop up the road in Silver City, New Mexico. After going through the mostly Southwestern objects donated to them, the head of the garden club started to think some of those things might have real value; she contacted the Scottsdale Art Auction and consigned a number of paintings and sculptures to them for a sale in 2018. The painting the garden club didn’t want, however, was a strange and disturbing piece that hung in the Alter’s bedroom, behind a door—that went to the antiques shop.

Hey, Is That Real?

From here, the story takes an amazing turn. The Manzanita Ridge Furniture and Antiques store owners paid a little more than $2,000 for the estate. When they began sorting through the objects they bought sight unseen, they came upon the painting behind the Alter’s bedroom door. David Van Auker didn’t know what it was and so, brought it back to the antique shop and leaned it against a wall. A local walked in, took one look at it and asked Van Auker if it was real—was it a real de Kooning?

A quick Google search turned up all Van Auker needed to know. He called the University of Arizona Museum of Art and spoke to curator Olivia Miller, telling her he wasn’t crazy, but he believed he found their painting, “Woman-Ochre.” “I’ll never forget that moment,” Miller said in an interview for The Thief Collector. “I asked him to email me photos of the painting detailing the signature. Every time we opened a photo, we said, how do we get to Silver City? This is the painting!”

After contacting the University police department, however, the curators were told not to talk to Van Auker anymore, that they would take it from there. So, they stopped responding to Van Auker’s calls and texts. In Silver City, however, word of the de Kooning had spread. “People were coming in saying we want to see the de Kooning,” Van Auker said of the painting that he learned was estimated to be worth more than $100 million. Unnerved, he took the painting home and hid it behind his sofa. He then pulled a couple guns from his gun safe. “People are killed for less than a hundred million dollar painting,” Rich Johnson, Van Auker’s business partner said.

For the Record

The antiques dealers just wanted the de Kooning gone. At the museum, the curators too were panicking. What if this Van Auker guy changed his mind and sold the painting out from under them. Finaly, van Auker left a voicemail for Miller saying that all he wanted was for the painting to go back to the museum and that he was freaking out: “Somebody,” he said, “might cut my throat for that painting. Keep this on record: I don’t want to hold it hostage; I don’t want a ransom. I want you to have the painting back.”

To the great relief of everyone, the museum staff was finally given permission to get the de Kooning. It had sustained considerable damage from being sliced out of its frame, rolled, and smuggled out under the thief’s coat and was sent to senior conservators at the Getty Museum for restoration. Happily, it’s now back home at the museum and on display, once again.

Where There's Smoke

Remember our amateur art sleuth, Lou Schacter? He had a hunch that “Woman-Ochre” was not the only stolen art in the Alter’s home. He reached out to Van Auker and asked what he thought. In a story for Medium, Schacter recounts his conversation with Van Auker who told him the FBI said that none of the works sold at auction were listed in its stolen art database. That didn’t mean they weren’t stolen.

Schacter wondered about three pieces in particular that the garden club sent to the Scottsdale Auction. In the documentary The Thief Collector, there were photos of the interior of the Alter’s home and an interview with a woman from the garden club who says there were paintings by Higgins and Sharp, as well as sculptures by Remington, Allan Houser, and an RC Gorman.

Using photos from the documentary, Schacter started searching auction records looking for matches. That’s when he discovered two paintings sold through the Scottsdale Auction on April 7, 2018, that looked like an exact match to the pieces stolen from the Harwood in March 1985.

Schacter reached out to Leherissey to let her know he thought a Sharp and a Hennings that were auctioned in 2018 belonged to the Harwood. “That’s really the first time it came to my attention,” Leherissey says. “That was December of 2023. I reached out to my collections manager and was like, is this for real?” Sure enough, her manager found the file on the stolen paintings and the documentation from forty years ago.

The Harwood team gathered their provenance for the paintings and created a dossier, then they contacted the FBI’s art crimes unit to ask if they would take the case. “The FBI decides whether to take a case based on various factors,” Leherissey says. “Luckily they did take ours, otherwise I don’t even know how we would’ve managed. We would’ve had to get lawyers involved, subpoena people, identify the buyers, and figure out how to secure the works back. Without the FBI’s support, it would have been very challenging.”

Home Again

Thanks to the FBI’s involvement, the Higgins and Sharp are now back at the Harwood, and in great condition. As for the buyers, one who paid $52,650 for the Sharp and the other who paid $93,600 for the Higgins, Leherissey doesn’t know if they got their money back from the Scottsdale Art Auction. “A collector who inadvertently purchases a stolen artwork may get some compensation,” Leherissey believes but is quick to add that auction houses have a lot of legal protections in place for situations like this. “It doesn’t sound like the auction house was ready to pay buyers back the money that they spent on the works.”

When I called to discuss this with the Scottsdale Art Auction I was told there is an ongoing investigation and that they cannot comment at this time.

These days the Harwood’s security systems are greatly enhanced and include cameras, sensors, alarms, and gallery guards—all things we patrons hardly notice anymore. But it’s amazing to think back to all that art hanging on walls in the Taos library that anyone could walk up to without being shooed back or set off an alarm. When asked if she thought the 1985 Harwood theft was a test run, Leherissey says, “Oh, maybe they’d done it a million times before; they seemed to have their game down. They would even put on costumes. But yes, it was very intentional. They were trying to steal from small organizations that might be more vulnerable.” She even wonders about other objects shown in the documentary that wound up at auction. “There was a Remington, an Allen Hauser, and an RC Gorman—three bronzes. We had the RC Gorman Gallery in Taos at that time. Did they just walk up the street and take the next thing? We don’t know how many other things they stole. What we do know is that they funded a lifestyle that was not sustainable on their apparent incomes.”

For Leherissey, getting their paintings back is more than just a mystery solved. “We have such a rich art community. Both of these artists were so much a part of the Taos community and the Harwood. Victor Higgins was on our founding board, and he gifted some of the most significant of his works to us directly. Those paintings not only came home to us, but the artists are home now, too.”

Stolen Art Resources

If you are a victim of an art theft, start by calling the local police. If the crime is within FBI jurisdiction—the object has traveled across state lines or was stolen from a museum—then you will contact the FBI, and a local FBI Art Crime Team member will begin the investigation.

According to the Santa Fe Art Crimes bureau, they recover paintings by following investigative leads and rely on the cooperation of all parties involved to be able to recover and return the paintings, as was the case with the Harwood Museum paintings.

As a collector, the FBI advises, protecting your own art starts with keeping an inventory of your valuables. To safeguard yourself against purchasing stolen art we recommend performing due diligence on anything you are wanting to buy, only go through reputable dealers, and always check the provenance.”

We encourage the public to review the National Stolen Art File at ArtCrimes.fbi.gov and if anyone has any information about any work listed, please report to 1-800-Call-FBI or tips.fbi.gov

-Statements attributable to the FBI Albuquerque Field Office

Additional information:

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/violent-crime/art-crime

https://www.fbi.gov/video-repository/newss-fbi-art-theft-program/view

AI: Should Artists and Collectors Be Worried?

In its most benign form, artificial intelligence (AI) is just another tool artists and collectors can use for advanced research. It’s not truly thinking up novel works of art; instead, AI quickly scours the internet’s data and images to generate answers to queries. It learns from data, identifies patterns, and makes decisions or predictions based on that learning.

But on a broader level, the technology raises new and significant questions about authorship, originality, and the real value of creativity. Have we, all of a sudden, devalued the skills that took human artists and other creative individuals many years to develop?

A growing number of artists and authors across the U.S. are suing AI companies for copyright infringement related to the use of their work in training generative AI models. In January 2023, illustrators Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz filed a landmark lawsuit in California challenging the unauthorized use of their art. Similar lawsuits have been filed in New York, including a 2023 class-action suit by The Authors Guild and 17 prominent authors, such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George R.R. Martin, against OpenAI. The authors claim that this unauthorized use constitutes “systematic theft on a mass scale” and threatens their livelihoods by enabling AI to generate content that mimics their writing styles.

It’s also notable that in June, the first major movie studios, Disney and Universal, sued an AI image generator with tens of millions of registered users for copyright infringement, bringing Hollywood into the broadening legal landscape over generative AI. The movie studios contend that AI company Midjourney used copyrighted works to train its software, which allows people to create images (and soon videos) that incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters. “Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” the companies said in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The End of Art? Not so Fast!

So, while the court system attempts to balance the scales, should collectors and artists be wary? As with almost everything concerning the valuation of art, the answer is nuanced. You should consult smart, trustworthy art curators, gallerists, and dealers to stay informed about current trends.

AI has shaken up the art world and has even struck fear in the hearts of artists, just as photography did when it was first presented to the public during the mid-19th century. French portrait painter Paul Delaroche summed up these fears upon seeing a daguerreotype in 1840 by reportedly saying, “From this day forward, painting is dead.”

Clearly, photography didn’t kill painting or even slow down its evolution from Impressionism to Dadaism to Abstract Expressionism and on to where we now see a resurgence in traditional Renaissance techniques in atelier-style schools across the country. Photography remains a useful tool for painters and sculptors, as well as a distinct artistic genre in its own right.

It's a Brave New...Something

To understand how AI and other advanced technologies are changing art, Sarah Winkler, a contemporary landscape painter in Morrison, Colorado, shares her insights on navigating this brave new world.

“People are worried that AI will replace artists, but that’s not my take on it,” says Winkler, who doesn’t use AI to generate art or compositions but uses it for in-depth research. “I can have these deep, long conversations with it,” she says. “Because my paintings are the story of how a landscape was formed, I might ask AI about the geology of, say, White Sands National Park. Why do the dunes take on that shape? What kinds of rocks would I find there, and what is the nature of the place and the climate? I’m using AI for deeper information about place.”

Crossing the line

Winkler also uses AI to pull up examples of how other artists have portrayed similar landscapes to what she’s currently working on. “That’s important because I don’t want to duplicate someone else’s work,” Winkler says. “I basically use it to hone my research. I already know what I’m going to paint; I just need a little more information. AI will scour the internet in seconds and give me information sourced from books, articles, and teaching workshops that exist online. It literally shaves off hundreds of hours of research.”

Other technologies that artists have employed for decades include CorelDRAW and Photoshop, which can mimic traditional techniques or transform someone else’s art into a new creation. Winkler, who began in graphic design, witnessed how technology dramatically altered the demand for fine art illustrators. But she has also embraced these technologies in her own work, creating small-scale collages using paper and photographs as models for her larger paintings. “I can source copyright-free photos that AI finds and use them as a layer in my collage sketches with my own photos and textural elements,” she explains. “Then I scan those into Photoshop and rework the design until it’s where I can envision it as a painting.”

Where technology crosses a line is when an artist takes someone else’s photos or paintings found online, feeds them into Photoshop, and manipulates the image into a painting or giclee print, something that can also be easily achieved with generative AI. “The anxiety over generative AI is that someone could type in, ‘create a mountain scene like Sarah’s.’ Generative AI might come up with an image like mine that the person then manipulates in some small way. The issue is, who is the original creator in this world?”

Oh, for God's Sake

Jake Taplin’s video, “How AI Tricked the World’s Largest Painting Competition,” is a useful resource for distinguishing between generative AI art and original artwork. Taplin critiques an AI-generated creation, a painting titled “The Witchling,” that was a prize-winning entry in the Art Renewal Center (ARC) 2024 competition of Realist art.

Had the judges known what to look for, “The Witchling” would have easily been caught and disqualified early on. Only after it won awards was the obvious AI trickery called to their attention. The ARC revoked the prize; its rules clearly state that AI and computer-generated art are strictly prohibited.

Check out Taplin’s video to learn the key signs of AI-created art, which include “strange AI textures, drawing errors, and wonky lighting effects.” Of course, these tips will only be briefly relevant because as AI learns, it will soon be able to correct these errors.

Move Over Rodin-There's an App for That

Tom Bollinger, the owner for more than 20 years of Bollinger Atelier, a specialized art casting and fabrication studio in Tempe, Arizona, provides another perspective. He says that technology is not only responsible for changing the means of production, but it’s also responsible for a larger perceptual shift. “Our entire culture is now driven by speed,” Bollinger says. “When Amazon can deliver something to you in a day or two, it changes the mindset. In the old days, when most of our sculpture clients understood the process, we had plenty of time to work. A life-sized sculpture would take three to five months to be sculpted, and then the clay sculpture would proceed to mold-making, then casting. That’s radically changed.”

Sculptors have used technology for decades, which has helped lower the cost of casting art. “But 3D scanning and rapid prototyping,” Bollinger says, “that’s really sped things up.” This technology enables one to scan a person and send those digital files to a company that 3D prints a wax mold, which is then sent to a foundry for casting. The “artist” in this scenario never has to get his hands dirty.

But is it cheating to print a scan of a model and pass it off as an original work of art?

“This is maybe a morality question,” Bollinger says. “In the traditional sense, yes, I consider that cheating. But if the end-user doesn’t see it as cheating, if they don’t care how these sculptures were made, then it’s really a transactional relationship. A lot of times during the commissioning process, it’s not about the art; it’s about the likeness of the figure to historical photographs.”

Before 3D scans and printing, a traditional monumental sculpture could take two to three years to finish. Now, according to Bollinger, a life-sized sculpture can be scanned, printed, and delivered in six months. “You can skip the mold making, skip the wax making, skip the wax dressing, and go straight to gating and casting,” he says. “For traditionalists, this is almost heresy. But I think for our younger artists, they’re all in. A lot of people just send us 3D files, and we print and cast them.”

Taking Control of Technology

There is a hybrid approach that Bollinger sees artists adapting in their practice: A sculptor creates a smaller maquette to send through the rapid prototyping process and then reworks the rapid prototype with additional wax. “They then assemble the prototype and resculpt the figure to get the lifelike texture that we want to see,” Bollinger says.

Here’s where collectors need to examine the work they are considering and become familiar with the artists they are collecting. Rapid prototypes created from scans of a person won’t show the hand of the artist — tool marks, fingerprints, and surface texture — and scans of an artist’s maquette leave little opportunity for the artist to correct proportion errors. “That happens quite a bit when somebody’s modeling an 18-inch figure and then has it scanned to life-size; the head will be too big or too little, for example. It’s a matter of getting those proportions correct,” Bollinger explains.

In the above three images, you can see how sculptor Laurie Barton used a hybrid approach to complete her commission of Minerva for the National Museum of the Marine Corps. She began by sculpting a maquette then had a 3D scan done. The scan was used to create a large foam armature. She clayed the armature, which gave her the opportunity to correct any issues and add more detail. Finally, she had traditional molds made, which will be sent to her foundry to be cast in bronze.

The Hand of the Artist

Over the years, the art world has confronted forgers and cheats, all trying to make a fast buck by faking out collectors and curators. Technology — on both sides of the issue — has kept pace with the cheaters by offering scientific data used in validating authenticity and provenance, and uncovering fakery.

“I think everyone has a large digital footprint these days,” Winkler says. “Artists post a lot of their art online where AI can access imagery. This exacerbates the problems with copyright, especially for artists whose end products are in digital print formats that can be reproduced more easily without the artist’s direct involvement. In this instance, there’s not a lot of control over someone making their own rip-off of your work and then selling it. Collectors have to educate themselves about different art media, and that will get trickier as time goes on because AI-generated art exists in another realm that we can’t control.”

But knowing the downside, Winkler and Bollinger both see AI and technology as offering more opportunities for creating art. “A proper artist will know they can’t hit three buttons and get a painting,” Winkler says. “You have to use your voice. I also see artists cleverly finding ways to distance themselves from AI by changing their materials or surfaces to make sure there’s no question it was done by hand.”

“You always want to see the hand of the sculptor,” Bollinger adds. “You want to see tool marks and finger marks; that’s what gives a sculpture life.”

For more insight into art and how artists think, check out Defending the First Artists In, Understanding Yourself Through Art, and What Inspires an Artist’s Work.

How to Determine the Value of Art

When buying art—whether to fill a bare wall or add to a comprehensive collection of objects—do you ever wonder, “Is this really worth what I’m paying?”

You are not alone. Art–unlike pretty much anything else you buy where the cost is based on things like labor and parts, supply and demand–does not necessarily follow standard market rules. Or any discernible rules, for that matter. Sometimes it’s priced by the square inch but even then, if an artist really likes a painting, he might price it considerably higher. (And good luck finding out why.) This reality can leave collectors feeling a little queasy.

In the March 2023 issue of the Collector’s Notebook for Western Art & Architecture, I looked at how art is priced (Demystifying the Art Market). This month, I am going to try to add some context to the valuation of art and give you a few tools to bolster your confidence when making purchases. (You can read my original blog here.)

Art Dealers: King Makers

Dealers sell art, yes, but they actually play a much bigger role in building value—or more precisely, the perceived value—of art. In Michael Shnayerson’s book Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art, he sums up the market like this: “The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world—for contemporary art—is driven by a few passionate, guileful, and very hard-nosed dealers. They can make and break careers and fortunes.”

Whether you’re buying “contemporary art” ala Damien Hurst or not, the realities of the art market that this book sheds light on are ubiquitous. Art dealers around the world work behind the scenes to get their artists edit in magazines and newspapers and to shore up auction results (sometimes bidding works up or buying them at high prices to maintain or increase an artist’s value). Dealers also make sure their artists are discovered in the right art fairs and that important works are collected by prominent buyers. And they keep an eye on what museum curators are looking at, who they are planning exhibitions for and collecting because having your artists hanging on museum walls goes a long way in establishing value.

This behind the scenes work dealers do is a tried-and-true marketing strategy specific to the art world dating back to French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who, in the mid-1800s, changed the course of art sales forever when he started paying his artists monthly stipends to produce work. He so believed in his artists when no one else did that he kept pushing their work out into the market until his efforts finally paid off—in spades. Those artists were the “Impressionists.”

Everyone knows the Impressionists today but back when Durand-Ruel was their dealer and biggest patron, their work was openly mocked. Sure, Monet, Degas, and Renoir probably would have taken off at some point, but having a strong dealer in their court undoubtedly hastened their acceptance.

The Backroom

All this to say, if you are concerned about value, look more closely at the dealers who are working with the artists you admire. Yes, dealers are pushing the artists they carry because it’s their business, but they don’t have to sell art they don’t believe in.

Next time you stop in a gallery, try this approach: ask which artist the gallerist is most excited about. This query may just earn you a trip to the backroom and storage racks to look at hidden gems. Be sure to keep an open mind about what you’re getting to see and listen for why they personally love that artist. You can apply that criteria to artists and the work you’re considering buying.

Here’s the best part. Gallerists, like seasoned collectors, are always on the hunt for the next big artist and pinnacle works of art—those “painter’s paintings” and “sculptor’s sculptures.” These tend to be atypical works. If you like one of those pieces, buy it. They are rare and may mark a turning point in an artist’s career. The downside is that, if you decide to resell an atypical piece, you may not find a buyer because the majority of people won’t get it. If that happens, you need to channel your inner Durand-Ruel and hang on to it.

Museum Curators: Taste Makers

On the other side of the valuation-coin are art museums. Heiress Peggy Guggenheim is an interesting person to consider because she straddled both worlds of commerce and philanthropy.

(left Peggy Guggenheim in Paris, c. 1940, photo by Rogi Andre)

She had, for a time during WWII, owned a gallery in New York City, Art of This Century, where she exhibited and sold works by Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst, Clifford Still, Mark Rothko, and others. She too paid some of her artists stipends to work and was the driving force behind the careers of many Cubists, Surrealists, and Abstract Expressionists.

But she is best known for her prescient collecting ability—or perhaps it’s the other way around. Maybe she didn’t discover talent so much as she created the market for artists she collected. In the most positive light, Guggenheim epitomizes the important relationship between collectors and museums. This is why we recommend anyone wanting to start collecting, and those wishing to refine or level up, join groups through museums that financially support curators in their quest to buy pinnacle works of art.

The Inside Track

In the museum world, selling art to pay for the costs of running the institution is verboten. According to the American Alliance of Museums:

A museum may transfer an object to another museum or sell it, but if a deaccessioned object is sold, museum professional ethics require the proceeds from the sale be used only to acquire new objects for the collection or provide direct care of the collection.

In other words, no pillaging the museum’s holdings to pay the electric bill.

Perhaps the more important distinction here, however, is that museums are not to be confused with commercial galleries. This doesn’t mean museum curators work in a bubble—they are aware of the market—but their buying decisions need to be driven by factors outside the market.

You Bought What?

So, how do curators decide what to buy? We asked Susan Barnett, Scarlett Curator of Western Art, Whitney Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, for a little insight. Her exhibition, “POP! Goes the West,” opens this month and her recent research into curating that show added some interesting context to common issues that arise.

“We’re always looking for artists with a fresh take on the West,” she says, and explains that she considers a number of factors before adding works to the collection. “What are the stories we’re missing in our collection? What artists are thinking about the West we live in today?” And, interestingly, she says she wants to be wowed.

The problem with obtaining those “wow” pieces are that they are either too expensive for most museums to buy or, if the artist is newer on the scene and still affordable, their work is unproven and more of a gamble. To the latter point, Barnett says, “Any artist doing something exceptional will be different and look risky.”

In the book, POP Art, a Critical History, Albert H. Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, is remembered as saying: “If one choice in ten that we make turns out to be valid in retrospect, we will have done very well indeed.” This line underscores the immense problem museums—and collectors—face when buying art by living artists, especially those doing work that doesn’t easily fit into known categories.

Getting it Right

But don’t let those odds stop you! In fact, this is where museum curators in their role as visionaries for a collection can offer you a peek behind the veil, as it were. But first, a caveat. Do not join a collector’s groups if you expect your own aesthetic to be validated by the curator. They have a goal to collect important work that, as Barnett puts it, adds to the story and that will, fingers crossed, continue to tell that story long after they’re gone. Your job is to be a financial partner who, in exchange, gains knowledge and some pretty great access to artist studios and the homes of rockstar collectors, as well as behind the scenes tours of museums. You also get privileged access to curators.

But this access is where things can get sticky. Curators want to keep their major donors happy, but they also need to maintain distance and take time to consider every new work of art introduced to the collection. Storage space is usually tight as are budgets. Curators have to make tough decisions which may mean saying no to good art that simply doesn’t add to the overall collection. Again, trust the curator, ask questions, and know that you are contributing to a bigger mission.

Circling Back

So, we’re back to where we started with the question of determining value. The best plan is to study the market from both sides, commercial and non-profit. Visit galleries and then look to see what museums are collecting. An artist should be able to slowly and consistently raise their prices and have a constant exhibition history; this indicates a solid, thriving career that you can feel good about. If museums offer an artist a show and/or collect their work, take this as a serious stamp of approval. And when faced with art that catches you off guard and stirs a reaction inside you, remember, most collectors hated the Impressionists.

To learn more about the art market, check out these blogs:

Pricing Art: The Gender Gap

Making Sense of the Price of Art

Art Appraisals 101

This blog first appeared in the Collector's Notebook in Western Art & Architecture, April / May 2022

Ever wondered whether you should have your collection of original art appraised?

No worries, we’re here to help. For starters, the answer is: yes, most definitely. Not only that, but you should have your art collection appraised every three to five years, sooner for really high-end works.

Let’s start with why.

Insurance Coverage

One of the top reasons collectors need an appraisal is for insurance. This kind of appraisal determines the “replacement cost,” i.e., the cost to replace art stolen or lost in a fire, for example. Check with your agent, but insurance companies don’t usually cover art without an appraisal.

A common misnomer: My art is covered under my general homeowner’s policy.

It is and it isn’t. Because people were gaming the system, insurance companies put a seriously low cap on coverage of art and jewelry under homeowner’s policies. You need a floater called a “personal article policy.” And the only way to get this is with either a replacement cost valuation/appraisal (see the rules for your state and insurance company) or you can have your art dealer supply you with a document indicating the current market value–replacement cost–for works they sold you.

For living artists, these values are established by the artist often with input from dealers who handle their work. For deceased artists, this value is established on the secondary market and at auction.

Note: Insurance appraisals always get collectors excited; the retail price for work they purchased years ago, for most artists, will have gone up over time, sometimes significantly. Collectors need to remember that they probably can’t sell this art for the prices they see on a replacement cost appraisal. (I discussed these reasons in a blog about buying and selling at auction.)

The 3 Ds: Divorce, Debt, Death

Division of property. We’re talking divorce, debt, and death. As if these situations weren’t bad enough, now you have to pay someone to appraise your collection (or your family member’s collection) only to divvy it up. These appraisals are done to establish the “fair market value,” which is the amount each work of art would sell for between a willing buyer and seller. This is not the replacement cost; there is a difference, sometimes are very big difference.

Estate appraisal. These appraisals are required for probate dealings. There is a threshold an estate needs to meet before an appraisal is required by the IRS. Check with your accountant to determine whether the fair market value of the real and personal property included in the estate exceeds the annually established unified credit exemption.

Donation. Donating art to museums or institutions such as your alma mater serves the dual purpose of being both altruistic and a great tax write-off. Most institutions will request an appraisal before accepting donations. You’ll also need an appraisal for your accountant when tax time rolls around. These fair market appraisals come closer to replacement value but use auction records more heavily when determining value.

What to Look for in an Appraiser

In many states, appraisers of art do not have to be licensed to do replacement valuations for insurance. They do, however, need to have substantial market knowledge, which is why you can often find gallerists and curators doing these kinds of appraisals. Check the laws of your state before selecting an appraiser for insurance valuations and ask your insurance agent for his or her requirements. Most other appraisals will have to be done by a licensed appraiser.

No matter what kind of appraisal you require, it’s wise to look for an appraiser with specific knowledge of the art you collect. While appraisers can certainly sleuth out the valuation of most anything, some appraisers specialize in disciplines, such as Western art or Bauhaus furniture, jewelry or antique farm equipment. There are lots of factors to consider when determining valuation, so having someone with deep market knowledge will ensure the best results.

Do ask for recommendations and check online with the national and international associations of appraisers. You can also ask museum curators and gallerists you know, and even your insurance agent for referrals.

What to Expect

Appraisers will give you a letter of intent that explains how they work and how they charge–usually by the hour. Rates are fairly standard but vary from state to state. Plan for the appraisal to run $125 to $350 an hour.

Do not ask your appraiser to turn around and sell art for you. This is a major conflict of interest. If you want someone to sell your collection, you want an art adviser not an appraiser.

Get a Head Start

There are some great online tools to help keep track of your art, such as Airtable and My Art Collection. (Check out the link to Rose’s premade Airtable stocked with everything you need to get started.) Keeping your records in an orderly and central location will help your appraiser create an accurate repost and save time. Here’s a handy list of the key elements to track.

Artwork title. Don’t make this up. Often, the artist will have written the title on the back of a painting or along the base of a sculpture. If no title exists, call it “untitled” or “title unknown” and give it a small description.
Size of the image and outer size of the frame, height by width. For sculpture, add depth. Note: art dimensions are always listed in this order: height by width by depth.
Medium–oil, pastel, watercolor, bronze, etc. And list the specifics of the substrate, if you know it, such as “oil on linen,” or “c-print mounted on card.” If you’re not sure, call an artist; they will know immediately what you’ve got.
Year the artwork was created. If you don’t know exactly, list the approximate date, and toss the word “circa” after to denote that you’re pretty sure it was done close to this year.
What you paid. If you have the invoice and are uploading things in a spreadsheet, consider taking a scan or photo of your sales records, and add them to the digital file.
Where you purchased the artwork. This establishes a lovely trail called “provenance.” Over time, provenance established the importance of the work and, thereby, it’s value. If a work of art you own has been shown in a museum or major exhibition, make sure you keep record of that and leave the museum tag, if one was placed on the back of the work, exactly where it is. (By the way, if a museum wants to borrow something, for goodness sakes, say yes! This supports the artist and your collection.)
Frame on painting or base of sculpture. Add details like closed corner or chop frame (where you see the joined corners), gold leaf, compo ornamentation, etc. And note whether the frame is original to the work of art. If you are unsure, no worries. Just include a photo of the frame.
Note whether a painting is under glass or plexi, museum grade, UV, etc.
Detail any dings or mars to the frame or artwork surface, as well as discoloration or creases to works on paper.
Photographic documentation. You don’t need to take print worthy pictures for your records. In fact, iPhone pics are pretty darned good. The main aspects to document are the front and back of paintings. For sculptures, get photos from three to four angles. For all art, take a closeup of the signature and get at least one overall photo in the frame or of the sculpture and it’s base. If the frame is really special, get a couple closeups of corners or compo designs.

When taking pictures of paintings under glass, try this trick: using ambient light, lay the work flat on the ground, shut off overhead lights that are reflecting off the glass, then shoot down. You may have to move your body a bit until you find the best spot with the least reflection–or try standing on a chair–but the smart phone camera auto adjusts for low light.

Again, don’t forget to take a photo of the back of 2-D work. Sometimes the back of a painting is more intriguing than the front! Any writing, signatures, and labels from galleries or exhibitions help support the work’s provenance.

Airtable

I keep track of my collection and those of clients online, in Airtable. If you’re not familiar with Airtable, you really need to check it out. It’s a free, open-source application that has tables for just about anything you can think of. It’s basically Excel on speed. Here’s a link to my layout for collectors: Rose’s Art Collection Base.

Art Insurance: Are you sure you’re covered?

As residents of Los Angeles begin the complicated process of rebuilding after fires wiped out more than 15,000 homes and businesses, the last thing anyone facing that future wants to hear is that they weren’t adequately insured. A recent study by the University of Colorado Boulder, however, found that three-quarters of people who lost their homes in the 2021 Marshall Fire that ravaged suburban Boulder County were not fully covered. In fact, one-third of homeowners were severely underinsured, holding coverage for less than 75 percent of their home’s value.

In light of current events in L.A., North Carolina, and Hawaii, we thought the topic of insurance was timely, if only to nudge readers into double checking and confirming that their valuables are covered.

How Do Disasters Affect Premiums?

It’s safe to say that insurance premiums will increase no matter where you live. Insurance is a numbers game—lots of people buy into a plan to spread the risk as widely as possible. And then the probability of loss is factored in. With so many big events like hurricanes and wildfires, many companies have come to the point where they simply can’t charge enough in premiums to cover the inevitable devastation. In Florida, for example, almost no one will cover structures built within five miles of the coast. In L.A., more than a year ago, many insurance companies pulled coverage in areas at the highest risk for wildfires and mudslides because it’s not a question of if but when and that risk was just too high.

When this happened, state governments stepped in and created their own insurance funds. The problem with these funds, one agent explained, is fairly fundamental: states’ asset to liability ratios are not held to the same standards and regulations as the insurance industry is. If a state doesn’t have enough assets to pay out on claims, they will have to tap into other funding sources, essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul.

On top of that, citizens often lay blame on governments for not being able to protect them from disasters. In L.A., for example, lawsuits have been filed against municipalities claiming they should have enough water on hand to fight the fires. Legal battles such as these further drain the government’s coffers and can impede the payment process.

Know Before You Need It

Art does—and doesn’t—fall under your general homeowner’s policy. At one time, art and jewelry were covered, but because people started gaming the system, companies capped the payout; some companies pay as little as $2,500 per work of art.

To make sure you are covered, you need a supplemental “personal article policy.” These floater policies are fluid, meaning you can add and subtract objects without having to create a whole new policy. The catch is that you need to prove every items’ value.

Market Value

As trustworthy as you are, you can’t just call your agent and give him an amount you need to cover your collection; you have to have an up-to-date appraisal. (See Western Art & Architecture Collector’s Notebook April/May 2022 for more information on appraisals.) These appraisals document the replacement cost of the works in your collection, i.e., the cost of buying a work of art that is of “like kind and quality.” An appraiser will photograph the objects you want insured, condition report and document things like artist’s signature, dimensions, medium, framing or base, and what, if anything, is on the back or underside of each piece of art. Then the appraiser analyzes the market to determine the cost to replace each work of art if you had to buy it again.

Appraisals can be time consuming and get expensive but once you have it done your appraiser can update values on art that has increased rapidly. If you don’t have much art, you can also call the gallery where you purchased pieces and ask them to send you a current valuation document on their letterhead. They can substantiate the current market value as long as they are still selling those artists’ work.

In a 2024 interview for Antiques and the Arts Weekly, senior vice president and fine arts and valuable collections product manager for Chubb, Laura Doyle suggested that collectors with high value items have appraisal updates done every three to five years, but for works in art markets that tend to appreciate quickly, Doyle suggests a one to two year revaluation.

Mitigation

These personal article policies on art tend to be surprisingly reasonable. Jewelry is another story—these items are easily damaged or lost because we wear them, and they are easier to steal then fine art. But fine art, once hung, is relatively safe because it is kept out of harms way.

With large collections of significant value, insurance companies have underwriters who can visit your home and create a report with suggested ways to limit your risk of loss. It’s good to use the same company you use for homeowner’s policy because these policies should jibe, but also because if there is, say a fire or flood, the reimbursement processed can be streamlined. But it’s best to call around or speak with a broker who can compare several companies to find the best coverage for you.

Mitigating loss is not only a good way to lower your rate but it’s a good piece of mind. There are lots of great security systems that integrate burglar alarms with fire, water, temperature and humidity controls.

Interestingly, many companies no longer offer discounts for installing a sprinkler system in your home. The problem with these systems is that, along with putting out the fire—a fire that may have been easily handled with a fire extinguisher—they douse your entire home with water and that water damage can destroy floors, furniture and art, as well as soak your walls.

Other Concerns

It’s best to consider transporting art. If you take a painting out on loan, for example, you need to have the gallery clearly state that that their insurance covers the art while in your car and at your home while you make up your mind. If not, your insurance will not cover any damage, so you could be on the hook should anything happen. Once you do buy something, however, it is important that you let you agent know so he or she can add that to your personal articles policy. Savvy collectors will call their agent before they take possession of expensive works of art to make sure they are covered.

Essentially, collectors, the best defense is—you guessed it—a good offense. Call your agent, go over your coverage, and take the next steps to getting everything insured. Whatever you do, don’t wait until you need it.

How to Help Artists In Need

Many artists in L.A., South Carolina, Hawaii and other areas stricken by wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and other disasters have lost everything—art, archives, supplies, computers with their clients and gallery information. If you would like to help, please go online and research funds and resources in need of money and donations. Because there are a few people out there who have no problem taking advantage of those in need, we strongly recommend double checking the organization to make sure they are legit.

Some organizations to check into include:

The National Heritage Responders hotline at 202-661-8068 to talk with trained conservators and collections care professionals administered by the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation.

For questions about saving family heirlooms and personal collections, email the National Heritage Responders at NHRpublichelpline@culturalheritage.org.

Check out FEMA’s site, https://www.fema.gov/disaster/recover/save-family-treasures.

Grief and Hope, https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-rebuild-the-lives-of-las-artists-and-art-workers, a Go Fund Me effort in Southern California

North Carolina Arts Disaster Relief Fund operated by the North Carolina Arts Foundation is actively supporting artists, so contact them:

https://www.ncartsfoundation.org/donate-nc-disaster-relief

Author: Rose Fredrick

Understanding Why

Museums: Keepers of Mankind's Family Album

Buy The Best: Skill Versus Artistry

What Is Beauty?

It's The Story

Heart And Soul

Trail Makers Pave The Way

A Little Disney Is A Good Thing

When The Cure Is The Problem

A Long and Complicated History

Who Is Really At Risk?

Science Isn't Helping

Leading Reform

Practical Steps For Collectors

The Perspective Worth Keeping

How to save WPA murals in buildings slated for sale or demolition

Living New Deal

Who Will Remember

When We Invested in Art: The WPA

Treasure Hunt

Is the Cost Worth It?

For more information about saving the Wilbur J. Cohen Building and other New Deal Art and Architecture

What's So Special About Museum Curators?

Museum Worthy

Defining the Undefinable

Make a Plan

Digging Deeper

Direct Line

As always, thank you for reading! If you like this story, check out some of these stories:

Art Theft and the Black Market

But I Didn't Know

Sounding the Alarm

A Strange Email, an Amateur Sleuth, and the Documentary

Hey, Is That Real?

For the Record

Where There's Smoke

Home Again

Stolen Art Resources

The End of Art? Not so Fast!

It's a Brave New...Something

Crossing the line

Oh, for God's Sake

Move Over Rodin-There's an App for That

Taking Control of Technology

The Hand of the Artist

For more insight into art and how artists think, check out Defending the First Artists In, Understanding Yourself Through Art, and What Inspires an Artist’s Work.

Art Dealers: King Makers

The Backroom

Museum Curators: Taste Makers

The Inside Track

You Bought What?

Getting it Right

Circling Back

Insurance Coverage

The 3 Ds: Divorce, Debt, Death

What to Look for in an Appraiser

What to Expect

Get a Head Start

Airtable

How Do Disasters Affect Premiums?

Know Before You Need It

Market Value

Mitigation

Other Concerns

How to Help Artists In Need

Do you need an art valuation for insurance? Give me a call to discuss, 303-733-4755.