Fine art insurers hear lots of sob stories—“the maid attacked it;” “a water pipe burst and sprayed water all over it;” “movers dropped it”—but more important than what happened to an artwork is whether it can be repaired.  Can the work be fixed for less than the overall value of the piece? Has the damage lessened the value of the object? Is the artwork a total loss? Entire teams set about puzzling out the answers to these questions, with claims adjusters, art appraisers, art conservators and sometimes even dealers. And the final verdict may not be entirely up to the insurer. “The owners of the artwork may get their own experts,” Dorit Straus, an independent fine art insurance adjuster, told Observer. “You have people on one side and people on the other. It’s always a delicate conversation.”

Those conversations may start out diplomatically but can become all-out wars when parties disagree. Billionaire art collector Ronald Perelman sued a consortium of insurers for $410 million, claiming that five paintings in his collection—a Cy Twombly, two Ed Ruschas and two Andy Warhols—suffered smoke damage in a 2018 fire at his Long Island, New York estate. In his lawsuit, Perelman asserted that his artworks had lost their “spark” and “oomph” as a result of the smoke. The insurers contended that none of the five artworks was actually damaged in the fire and that their cumulative value was only $103 million. In September of this year, a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled against Perelman, siding with the insurers, stating that “[t]he artworks [can] be enjoyed as they were before.”

The lawsuit was newsworthy in part because it was so unusual. When everything goes smoothly—and most often it does—an adjuster examines the artwork and then brings in a conservator with expertise in the type of art to determine if the damaged object can be repaired and for how much. Assuming the cost of conservation isn’t significantly more than the piece’s value, the artwork is quickly handed over to the conservator to begin treatment. “You don’t want a long delay, because that could make problems much worse or even permanent,” Straus explained. After repairs are complete, an appraiser (“someone with expertise in fine art, not a real estate appraiser or generalist”) or a dealer with relevant expertise evaluates the object to determine whether the now-repaired work’s value has declined and by how much. There is no mathematical formula; it’s entirely circumstantial. It might be a small tear in a canvas, but it matters more if the tear is at the center of the painting or at the edge.

A fine art insurance policy generally covers the entire cost of restoration. If there is a loss of value due to the damage, exceeding 30 percent, the insurer will pay the policyholder 30 percent of the insured value. With especially unique works of art, however, complications can arise. “Photographs are exceedingly difficult to repair,” Albert Albano, former executive director of the Intermuseum Conservation Association, told Observer. “Once the homogenous surface has been disturbed, the damage is extremely difficult to camouflage, leading to a noticeable decline in aesthetic value.” And presumably also market value. However, the extent and placement of damage to a photograph may determine the degree to which the market value has been affected, as is currently being argued in a New York State court over water damage in 2011 to a section of a photographic triptych by Richard Avedon, The Chicago Seven (September 25, 1969). The owner of the triptych, the Richard Avedon Foundation, claimed that the work was worth $2.5 million prior to the damage and only $50,000 after the accident, while AXA Art Insurance Corp. assessed the pre-damage value at $2 million and the subsequent value at $1.6 million.

When there are disagreements between the valuations submitted by an appraiser for the insurance company and another by the policyholder, many fine art insurance policies have arbitration clauses that bring in a third appraiser to assess both valuations. In the Avedon dispute, the arbiter valued the photograph at $825,000 before the damage and $552,750 afterward.

Other options exist, according to Mary Pontillo, national fine arts product leader at Risk Strategies, an insurance brokerage firm. “A photograph may be reprinted by a living artist and even sometimes by an artist’s estate, thereby avoiding a total loss. A total loss scenario really is determined on a case-by-case situation.”

With paintings, conservation may be done so well that damage does not adversely affect the fair market value. In 2006, casino owner Steve Wynn was showing a 1932 Picasso in his collection, La Rêve, to prospective buyer Steven Cohen when he accidentally put his elbow through the canvas. The price at the time was $139 million. Restoring the Picasso took several years and involved stitching the canvas and filling in lost areas of paint, but Cohen remained interested in the work and, in 2013, purchased it for $155 million. (“It might have sold for more had it not been damaged,” Straus said.)

With older artworks—Old Master paintings and even work by modern masters—the insurance industry’s fine art appraiser or expert may choose not to say that an object has been totally destroyed, “unless it is no longer recognizable,” Straus said. “Even heavily damaged works may retain cultural significance, although determining what that works out to in actual dollars is not easy.”

With older artworks, the conversation about the extent of damage and loss of value typically occurs between the collector and the insurer (or their representatives). With works of contemporary art by artists who are still alive, the conversation broadens, as those artists may have a say in the matter. Some artists will offer to repair their own works or want to select and supervise a conservator, while others might hold the view that their creations will never be the same, demanding that their names not be associated with the artworks. Under federal law, an artist “shall have the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation.” An artist disavowing his or her artwork can eliminate all market value—a reason that Sotheby’s gave for removing from a 2011 auction a 1990 screenprint mounted on an aluminum sheet, Cowboys Milking, by Cady Noland after the artist saw that a corner of the piece was damaged and told Sotheby’s that “her honor and reputation [would] be prejudiced as a result of offering [it] for sale with her name associated with it.” A lawsuit brought by dealer Marc Jancou, the consignor of the Noland work, was dismissed in 2013.

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For all the good that a fine art piece may do for our spirits and souls, it remains a tangible object that costs money to buy and produces no income while it is owned. Artworks can be sold, but the former owner must then pay hefty capital gains taxes—28 percent to the IRS, plus 12 percent capital gains tax for New York State residents, plus a 3.8 percent federal surcharge for high-income individuals and couples, less the state income tax deduction on a taxpayer’s federal return, for a net combined tax rate of roughly 41 percent. One way a growing number of art and collectibles owners have found to earn income from their art while deferring capital gains taxes is through charitable remainder unitrusts.

Called, somewhat inelegantly, a CRUT, a charitable remainder unitrust allows collectors to transfer tangible objects such as art to a trust and authorize a trustee to sell the artwork when the market appears to be at a high point. The proceeds of the sale are tax-deferred, and the money can be reinvested to grow over time within the trust. If Collector X owns a $1 million painting and sells it outright, that person will pay the 41 percent tax and be left with $590,000. If, however, Collector X places the painting in a CRUT and then sells it, that person will have the full $1 million working for him and will pay capital gains on a deferred basis.

Once a sale occurs, a portion of the proceeds—ranging from five to 50 percent but typically 5-8 percent—will be distributed annually to the beneficiaries, usually the donor and their spouse. Although some CRUTs are designed to last a specified number of years, most charitable remainder unitrusts end at the death of the last individual beneficiary, and the remaining funds become gifts to designated charities.

“This is a tax deferral strategy,” Lawton Leung, a trust and estates partner in the law firm Withers, told Observer. The charitable trust is considered a tax-exempt entity. “Let’s say you’re funding that CRUT with artwork, whatever type of appreciated property, the trust can sell it without a tax hit. The tax would apply when there’s a distribution of the annuity or the unitrust payment. So then the donor or the grantor of the trust will have to pay taxes on that sliver—what he or she gets from the trust every year. The payments from the trust may be made quarterly, annually, biannually or monthly. It depends on the type of frequency you want, but at least once a year.”

The trust functions much like a 401(k) or IRA, as the assets can be reinvested and grow on a tax-deferred basis. “We particularly like to use charitable remainder trusts when there’s an opportunity to defer a large capital gain,” Leung said.

He noted that CRUTs offer collectors a way to take advantage of today’s art prices in a tax-efficient manner, generate income for retirement and satisfy philanthropic objectives. “The charity has to receive at least a 10 percent actuarial value at the time of setting up the trust. The amount that goes to charity at the end of the term could vary. There is some unpredictability to what the charity actually gets, but at least at the start of the trust, it’s intended that the charity would receive at least 10 percent of what was put in.”

Collectors can reduce their capital gains and estate taxes, but it isn’t entirely win-win. Once they place works of art in a CRUT, they cannot keep them in their homes or offices—the rules governing remainder trusts are similar to those for individuals setting up private foundations—so most keep the art elsewhere. That may be at a bank, a law firm or an art gallery willing to hold it; many collectors choose fine art storage facilities. Once an artwork has been donated to the charitable remainder trust, it stays there; the collector cannot change his mind and take it back.

Charitable remainder trusts are typically not created in isolation but rather as part of a broader estate planning strategy for individuals with a range of valuable assets. Still, Leung said, the typical cost of setting up a CRUT is $10,000. The first step is for the donor to transfer art or other personal assets irrevocably to the trustee, usually a lawyer or banker. An IRS actuarial table calculates, based on the age of the beneficiaries, the percentage payout rate and an interest rate, both the amount the beneficiaries are expected to receive over the lifetime of the CRUT and the amount that will go to one or more designated charities. The donor then deducts the calculated percentage gift to the charities at the time the trust is created, based on the original cost of the objects rather than their current fair market value. That deduction may be spread out over five years. For example, if the IRS actuarial table indicates that 70 percent of the trust’s assets will go to the beneficiaries and the remaining 30 percent to a charity, the donor would be entitled to deduct 30 percent of the cost of the assets. A painting purchased for $100,000 and transferred to a CRUT would entitle the donor to a $30,000 deduction.

Every year after the trustee sells the art, the individual beneficiaries will typically receive a fixed percentage of the annual value of the trust assets. If a painting in a CRUT generates $1,000,000 in net proceeds and the payout percentage is set at five percent, the beneficiary will receive $50,000 in the first year of the trust. These distributions, known as unitrust payments, are taxable to the beneficiary in the year they are made, based on the beneficiary’s overall income and the manner in which trust income has been invested. Meanwhile, assets remaining in the CRUT continue to earn income and realize capital gains without immediate tax cost to the trust or the beneficiary. As a result, five percent annual unitrust payments may grow over time as trust assets appreciate on a tax-deferred basis. The collector receives an upfront tax deduction and pays taxes as they receive annuity payments.

There is more than one type of charitable remainder trust. A charitable remainder annuity trust provides the collector with a predetermined payment each year, while a unitrust may pay out varying amounts annually depending on the trust’s performance.

Frequently, those considering a CRUT are planning for retirement, a period in life when they want to maximize income and minimize costs. Long-time art collectors may hold highly appreciated assets that carry high costs for storage, security and insurance and would generate large capital gains taxes if sold. People in that situation often want to simplify their lives by shedding some of their art assets, but they prefer not to incur a large tax bill in the process. A charitable remainder unitrust provides them with a stream of income and a smaller tax burden than they would face if they sold the assets outright, preserving more of their money for one or more charities of their choice.

While trust assets must go to charity, there is no requirement that the charity be designated when the trust is created. People change their minds about which charities they want to support, and that’s fine. The trustee may also name the charity.

In the movies—How to Steal a Million, Gambit, Hudson Hawk, The Thomas Crown Affair and Trance, to name a few—art thieves are clever, dashing and skillful. In the U.S., however, thefts of artwork from museums and private homes tend to be inside jobs, committed by people who are far less suave: “More times than not, they are someone like a contractor or who receives information from a contractor or other invitee into the home, such as friends of the son of a housekeeper who cleans the house. She tells her son that the people she cleans for are rich and they have an antique collection and the son tells his friends,” museum security consultant Robert Keller tells Observer. It might also be a relative of the homeowner who has “a substance abuse problem,” according to Denver-based art collections management consultant Rob Layne. When there is a theft, these are the first people law enforcement investigates.

Some art thefts are also committed by what Layne calls “garden-variety burglars. They break in, steal silver, money, jewelry and artwork, because it’s there.” True art heists are less common, although he notes that in Europe there are gangs who specialize in art theft. Even the recent brazen (and rather thrilling) theft of eight of the French crown jewels from the Louvre’s Galerie d’Apollon was perpetrated according to most accounts by petty thieves, not seasoned criminal masterminds.

If you have a valuable collection of art, do you care who might steal it or do you just want to keep it safe? Probably the latter. Art theft is a multibillion-dollar annual problem worldwide, conducted with a high degree of impunity, Christopher A. Marinello, founder and chief executive officer of Art Recovery International, tells Observer. He notes that “historically, the figure tends to be low, perhaps five to 10 percent” of all artworks reported to the National Stolen Art File are ever recovered, and that recovery usually happens years later. The percentage of art thieves brought to justice is far lower, largely because by the time an artwork is recovered the statute of limitations has expired. Because there are no title documents for art as there are for cars, artworks move from the illicit market to the licit market with ease. However, he added that “technology is improving, and it is becoming more and more difficult for criminals to sell stolen items.” Still, “so many law enforcement agencies worldwide are consumed with immigration, health and terrorist issues that investigation into art world theft and fraud cases are not exactly a priority.”

Protecting one’s art collection from theft can be costly, which may impact how collectors approach security. The more expensive technological solutions include motion-detection sensors in rooms where valuable artworks are displayed; intrusion-detection systems for all entry and exit points (doors, windows, hatchways, chimneys, air-conditioning units); alarm systems attached directly to artworks that send signals to staff or a security company if an object is moved; motion-activated video cameras around the property; reinforced locks and striker plates or electronic access controls; and detailed security protocols for inventorying art, activating systems and verifying entry. DNA threads woven into the backs of paintings can also assist with identification. “For the normal house, 7,000-8,000 square feet, the average cost might be $25,000-50,000,” Robert Wittman, an art security and recovery consultant who led the FBI’s National Art Crime Team until his retirement in 2008, tells Observer. His 2010 book Priceless documents some of the Art Crime Team’s derring-do under his watch. “For a larger house with a lot of acreage around it, you can spend considerably more.” Most of the people he has worked for have collections valued between $6 million and $100 million.

“You don’t want cameras to be hidden,” Wittman says, “because you want thieves to know they are being watched.” Another suggestion is not to mount cameras too high, “because you want to see someone’s face and not just the top of a baseball cap.” And as simple as it might seem, a sign at the gate or door that says “Protected by…” may also dissuade robbers from entering. Less expensive measures include registering objects with the London-based Art Loss Register, which alerts authorities if any reported stolen pieces surface at public sales around the world. The cost of registering artworks is $25 for the first five pieces, decreasing to $18 for 10 or more.

Homeowners with valuable property should of course know who is entering their homes, perform background checks on staff and obtain the names and addresses of all contractors and assistants. Layne stated that staff should be alerted electronically to intruders or fires and “they should receive training on what steps are to be taken.” Those types of monitoring systems generally cost under $200, but even the best systems and protocols won’t work if homeowners forget to activate them.

The reality is that owners of valuable objects often have a false sense of security. Keller says he is “constantly telling” clients that “they need alarms on all levels of the home, not just the ground level. They can’t seem to understand that criminals will climb to the upper floors of a house or break glass, something normal people probably wouldn’t do. I also have to explain technology to them. Often, a standard burglar alarm’s connection to the off-site monitoring station can be defeated and they need better, more expensive monitoring. One client lived near a police station, so she assumed the whole department was sitting in the squad room waiting for her call and the whole department would stop eating donuts and walk over. In reality they are all out on patrol and are dispatched to respond. Presumably, the cops in the station are busy on another case and aren’t even listening to the police radio. Others treat art, artifacts and especially antiques as merchandise or furniture and take no special steps to secure it.”

Art collectors serious about protecting their collections should record every artwork with digital or photographic images and keep sales receipts, and that documentation should be stored off-site—whether in a bank safe deposit box or electronically in the cloud—so it isn’t destroyed should something happen to the house. This information is crucial for insurance claims and recovery efforts, as without proof of ownership, collectors may not be able to recover artwork. Wittman advises photographing objects from both wide and close-up angles, focusing on what makes each piece unique, such as the edition number on an Andy Warhol print or a chipped corner on a vase. This can help speed the return of recovered works to their rightful owners.

Another layer of protection is storing artworks in fine art storage facilities, which differ from standard self-storage units because of their environmental controls (temperature, humidity, ventilation), heightened security and higher cost. Keller advises collectors to ask pointed questions before choosing a facility: whether it has suffered any past losses, what types of alarm systems are used and whether museums store objects there. “You want to know who has access to storage areas and what types of background checks are done on these people,” he says. “You want to know if they have their own guards who are trained and know the facility, or if they just hire rental guards.”

Layne also recommends that collectors visit storage facilities periodically—“look at your stuff once in a while”—to confirm everything is still there. If a collector who hasn’t visited in months or years discovers something missing, “it becomes almost impossible to identify who might have stolen it. The trail gets cold.”

Collectors can take some of these precautions themselves, while others hire security consultants to assess their needs and implement protections. The International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection is one source of information, and fine art insurers often offer additional recommendations. Nothing is cheap, but Marinello notes that “we see an increase in spending on security measures after the fact” of a theft rather than before, which suggests many collectors don’t understand the risks they face. Buying art should be enjoyable—there’s the thrill of discovery, the chase, the acquisition. Ownership, ideally, should bring equal pleasure, but the threat of theft adds stress. While precautions can be costly, they may also provide peace of mind.

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There are many places to view the art of Keith Haring in New York City, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum. You can now add the Pride Health Center in SoHo, a clinic that serves the LGBTQ+ community, which recently received the donation of a painting from a collector who does not wish to be named.

The gift was part of a group of more than 50 paintings by different artists given to the New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation, a network of hospitals, rehabilitation centers and community health clinics throughout the five boroughs. “The collector no longer had space for these works and decided to donate them,” Alex Glauber, a Manhattan art advisor who helped arrange the donation for his client, told Observer.

Paring down one’s holdings and donating artworks to nonprofit institutions is not uncommon. Most museum acquisitions are gifts from collectors who are pleased to have their family associated with a prestigious art institution, perhaps getting their names engraved on a plaque on a gallery wall while also obtaining a tax deduction. What is different here is that the donation did not go to the Met, the Whitney or MoMA (or any number of other art museums) but to a nonprofit medical facility. “It’s a win-win for everyone,” Glauber said. “The collector edited his collection, and the artworks get a second life in a place where they can provide interest and pleasure for people who may be in a difficult situation.”

Donating art to a museum sounds appealing, he noted, but major museums have more art than they know what to do with. Institutions are increasingly selective about what they will accept, and even those objects they take are likely to be put into storage, rarely if ever exhibited. “My goal was to find the best home for these artworks,” he said, “and if you take ego out of it—the need to be lauded for their donation by a museum—you get the same tax deduction for the gift, and the works will actually be seen by people.”

Unnamed though this donor may be, he is part of a growing number of art collectors who, when faced with the estate planning question of what to do with valuable artworks in their possession, have looked at alternative nonprofit sites for donations, including libraries, retirement homes and nursing homes.

New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation has a collection of more than 8,000 artworks, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints and works on paper, as well as textiles and glass works by artists such as James Van Der Zee, Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler, spread among the 70-plus facilities in its network. “The artworks are not just to adorn the walls,” Larissa Trinder, assistant vice president of the Corporation’s Arts in Medicine program, told Observer. “It is used as a strategic tool in the care of patients, staff and families.”

Medical facilities of all types bring together people at some of the worst moments of their lives, and the artwork in waiting rooms, staff rooms and lobbies offers points of interest and relaxation. “Studies have shown that artwork helps to reduce stress and boredom, reduces blood pressure and increases white blood cell count, all of which are factors in the healing process,” said Jessica R. Finch, former art program manager at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts, which has been building a collection that now has about 5,000 pieces since 1996. One of the hospital’s most significant artworks is a ceiling-hung glass work by Seattle artist Dale Chihuly. That piece was from a corporate art collection that could not sell it because it was so large, and instead offered it to the hospital.

Another sizable art collection outside a museum is at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale, New York, which has approximately 4,500 pieces, including works by Marc Chagall, Jim Dine, Herbert Ferber, Robert Mangold, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Pablo Picasso, Ben Shahn and Andy Warhol.

The Hebrew Home does not solicit donations of artworks but instead “collectors come to us,” said Susan Chevlowe, chief curator of the collection and director of the retirement home’s Derfner Judaica Museum, which has a collection of Jewish artifacts. “Some hear about us from art consultants, dealers, gallerists, auction houses or even other museums. Others may have visited someone here and know about the museum and art collection that way, or learn about us from a friend who has been here. As an alternative to selling an artwork, a collector may decide to donate a work to a nonprofit organization like ours. We’ve had art dealers and consultants recommend us to their clients.”

Donating artwork to a non-museum charity may raise tax and other considerations for collectors. To receive a full fair market value income tax deduction, the U.S. donee organization must show that its use of the artwork is related to its tax-exempt purpose, referred to by the Internal Revenue Service as a “related use.” If there is no related use, the donor’s charitable deduction will be limited to the donor’s cost basis in the artwork—the original purchase price. A painting bought for $50,000 that is now worth $500,000 would only allow a $50,000 deduction.

Many charities hold benefit auctions, soliciting artworks and other items from donors that can be sold to generate revenue for operations. Many public radio and television stations, for example, seek donations of artwork to be sold at their annual benefit auctions. Donors of those artworks would only be permitted cost-basis deductions.

For a donor to deduct full fair market value, the importance of artwork in a hospital or other nonprofit—as part of a healing process or for another reason—must be part of its tax-exempt purpose and listed in the organization’s purpose statement, which is filed with the Secretary of State where the organization is incorporated and with the IRS. For institutions that existed before adding art programs, the role of art would need to appear in an amended purpose statement. As a result, prospective artwork donors should ask for that statement to ensure the IRS won’t challenge their deduction.

For instance, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, a nursing home in the Bronx founded in 1917, started an art program in the mid-1970s and received a letter from the IRS in the late 1970s stating it could be deemed a museum for art donation purposes. As much as some hospitals, libraries and retirement homes may resemble art museums, they are not museums, which may cause some prospective donors to think twice about gifting valuable artwork. Some institutions have separate fine art insurance policies that cover damage and theft, while others do not. Cedars-Sinai does, while Hebrew Home covers all art and non-art contents under a blanket building policy. Security at a hospital is directed at patient safety, not artwork protection, although reports of damage and theft are rare. “We cover all the artworks in Plexiglas and sturdy framing, and it is highly secured to the walls,” Trinder said. “You’d need a sledgehammer to crack it off.”

She noted that “we are careful about what we accept into the collection. We won’t take works we can’t properly store and protect or too large or too much in need of conservation.” Additionally, artwork images cannot be violent—i.e., “nothing triggering”—or conjure up feelings of loneliness.

Sculptures tend to present more risk than two-dimensional objects, and some pieces may be too valuable to keep. “A Picasso painting wouldn’t be appropriate for us,” Jennifer Finkel, former art curator at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, which has a collection of 6,000 objects, told Observer. “It might be too fragile or too valuable, and we want to be responsible for the works in our collection.” She recalled a Milton Avery painting donated to the hospital in the 1950s; 30 years later, its value had risen so much that staff decided to sell it. “We couldn’t keep it. It needed to be in a museum.” The hospital eventually sold the painting at Sotheby’s, and then used “the proceeds to furnish an entire new building with art.”

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While no one can predict what the art of the future will look like, it seems increasingly clear that at least some of it will be created with the help of artificial intelligence. A growing number of visual arts programs at independent art colleges and universities now offer courses—and in some cases, entire degree programs—focused on advanced technology. These include Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, the Cleveland Institute of Art & Design in Ohio, the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University in Bloomington, Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Students graduating from these and similar programs are unlikely to abandon what they’ve learned once they leave school.

What exactly are they being taught? Rick Dakan, chair of the Emerging Technology Committee at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, described artists who make “digital images with complex workflows that incorporate A.I. tools in their multi-step process. They start with a hand-drawn sketch or drawing, put that in A.I. to get a more detailed color rendering, take that back out and paint over it in Photoshop or Illustrator”—image editing software first developed in the 1980s—“then take that image and use an A.I. tool to make a three-dimensional rendering of it and print a model with a 3-D printer.”

Caleb Weintraub, director of the Eskenazi Technology and Innovation Lab in the School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University, described one of his own creations, a project called “Speculative Portraiture,” in which “a voice becomes a picture. The finished works are hand-painted portraits on panel, not prints or screen outputs.” He works with A.I.-generated voices—sometimes his own or those of consenting colleagues and family members—to explore what human head images are produced when different vocal features are fed into an A.I. program. “I then make a series of gesture drawings using the images as references, as if encountering the same person in different moments.”

Tom Leeser, founding director of the Art and Technology Program and director of the Center for Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), described the initial artistic use of A.I. as “making images from prompts, asking a program to generate something based on a question. For instance, make me a sunny day and then you’ll get any number of images of a sunny day.” The next steps, however, can be far more technical. Scott Benzel, a faculty member in CalArts’ Program in Art and Technology, recalled a 2017 piece he created, Mathesis and Mathematikoi, for string quartet, dancers and telescope operator. The “score was composed using earlyish generative A.I., including Noatikl and Wolframtones and was based on Hubble’s Constant, the law of cosmic expansion that Edwin Hubble discovered using the telescope at Mt. Wilson in 1929. Other elements of the piece, including the motion of the telescope dome and the ‘counting’ elements of the dance, were determined using similar generative methods. For the score, I chose and edited the generative output into something that I found pleasing. The score turned out to be too complex, unplayable by humans and had to be simplified by the score conformer and the players.”

While the process may sound playful, these and other professors stress that A.I. is a tool—not the final product. “Outputs generated solely by A.I. systems are rarely treated as finished work,” Weintraub said, adding that “legal and ethical questions—authorship, attribution, data provenance—are part of the broader critical conversation in courses that engage with A.I. tools.”

Ry Fryar, assistant professor of art at York College of Pennsylvania, explained that his courses in the Digital Art and A.I. major teach students to use A.I. tools as part of a larger creative process. “The focus is on creativity itself, because without that, the results are common, therefore dull and fundamentally inexpert. We work with students on how to guide A.I. tools at a professional level, stay aligned with developing good practices and understand current copyright law, ethics and other standards for responsible A.I. use.”

Artificial intelligence, particularly generative A.I.—which produces text, videos, images and other forms of data—has been both a source of fascination and anxiety in recent years. On the worry side, high school and university faculty in the humanities struggle to determine whether written assignments were completed by students or with ChatGPT or another generative A.I. program. Existing detection tools are unreliable, and educators are hesitant to accuse students of misconduct without solid evidence. Jessica Sponsler, assistant professor of art history at York College of Pennsylvania, noted that “I’m a medievalist. I can read Latin,” but added, “I’m dealing, we’re all dealing, with A.I. We are in the middle of a change period, and most faculty here acknowledge that students are using ChatGPT. Our job is to help them use A.I. in a way that improves their skills and doesn’t substitute for those skills.”

Andrew Shea, associate dean of the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design, said that the college isn’t teaching students to code or create a “large language model,” nor to “push a button and get an answer.” Instead, “It’s about teaching them how to think about when, why and how they might use A.I., if they need to at all. If they do use it, students are expected to learn how to use it intentionally, reflect on its impact on their process, and keep their own voice and vision at the center. I tell them A.I. is like a spice—it can add complexity or shift a flavor, but it can’t be the whole meal. We’re trying to develop better thinkers and makers. Heavily using A.I. often limits both of those from happening.”

Outside academia, concerns extend further. Will entire fields of employment be replaced by A.I.? Generative A.I. has already become a source of companionship for isolated young people and the elderly, sometimes with troubling consequences. Lawsuits by Getty Images and several artists against Stable AI (creator of Stable Diffusion), Midjourney and DeviantART (maker of DreamUp), alleging copyright infringement, have been winding through the courts for years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Copyright Office continues to wrestle with whether an artwork created using A.I. qualifies for copyright protection, since only human-created works are eligible.

Basil Masri Zada, assistant professor of digital art and technology and head of the Center for Advanced Computing in the School of Art + Design at Ohio University, said convincing faculty, administrators and legal counsel that they weren’t encouraging cheating or risking legal exposure “took us a year to make sure that we are doing things correctly. We had to educate our own school about what this all is.”

While colleges and universities in the U.S. appear to be embracing A.I. in studio art courses, not everyone is on board. The University of New South Wales in Australia introduced this fall a course in its School of Art and Design titled “Generative A.I. for Artists,” prompting a petition signed by more than 7,000 students demanding its cancellation. “Our key objection is that the course encourages and requires students to use generative A.I. to create art,” said Robin, a fourth-year student in the university’s fine art degree program who asked that their last name not be used. “As detailed further in the petition, there are numerous ethical, environmental and humanitarian issues with the use of generative A.I., and we do not believe it is appropriate for a university to be encouraging it.”

He called the idea that A.I. is the inevitable future “defeatist,” adding, “we’ve seen how campaigns and legislation around technology, particularly in the E.U., have served to protect people and the environment. Why should we give up hope with generative A.I.? We don’t need to quit before we’ve even started.” A university spokesperson defended the course, noting that it “critically explores the creative and ethical questions raised by A.I., rather than simply promoting or celebrating its use.”

Whether to teach A.I. and how to teach it remains a matter of debate across academia—perhaps more about how than if. Andrew Shea said, “the deeper issue is authorship. And this is what we focus more on at Parsons with our students: Are you owning your process? Do you decide what to keep, what to reject and what meaning to shape? Or do you simply hand all of that over to systems built on the unpaid labor of countless others?”

Will A.I. in the arts endure, or is it just the latest trend? Fifty years ago, art students often entered school aspiring to become painters or sculptors but shifted to film and video. Twenty years ago, they turned toward social practice. Now, courses and degrees in artificial intelligence are redefining creative education once again—shaping students’ thinking and offering seemingly new career paths.

In recent years, university studio art programs—and especially independent art colleges—have expanded their offerings in every direction. The Savannah College of Art and Design, for instance, has degree programs in Equestrian Studies and the Business of Beauty and Fragrance. The Maryland Institute College of Art allows students to minor in cartooning. Ringling College of Art and Design offers an undergraduate degree in Business of Art and Design and CalArts offers a graduate degree in Aesthetics and Politics. The Rhode Island School of Design has even introduced its first-ever tattooing course, which could one day lead to a full program. Maybe the proliferation of A.I. courses in art schools is simply part of higher education’s version of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

More on A.I. in the Arts

• Despite Creative Hubris, Artists Are Quietly Embracing A.I. in Their Work

• The Making of Flynn as an A.I. Student

• Norton Owen, Alvin Ailey and A.I. in the Berkshires

• Refik Anadol Is Launching the World’s First Museum of A.I. Art

The use of artificial intelligence in the art world has been touted for its supposed ability to spot fakes and authenticate works by Old Masters, identify which emerging artists will become the next superstars and even create artworks without human involvement. It’s all very space age and largely niche. But behind the scenes in a rapidly changing art market, A.I. is already playing a significant role in price setting.

Perhaps necessarily. The art market is “notoriously opaque,” New York City art advisor Alex Glauber told Observer, as the only information on what something costs comes from auction sales records—and only a small percentage of artworks are sold at public auctions. Most sales are made by galleries and dealers who never disclose what buyers paid. How are art advisors supposed to inform their clients about a possible purchase if they don’t know whether a price is reasonable? How are insurers supposed to write fine art policies for collections if the appraisers they rely on have little to no access to the prices paid for artworks?

A growing number of companies have developed programs using A.I. technology to help with just that, including iownit, Wondeur, ARTDAI and the Winston Artory Group. Glauber, an advisory board member of ARTDAI, noted that while “databases allow you to compile auction comparables, ARTDAI distinguishes itself in what you can do with that information. The platform can autogenerate tailored reports that analyze auction sale patterns and market performance for an artist. From there, you can upload artwork details for works that have not been publicly sold at auction, and ARTDAI can analyze the inputted transaction data against historical auction results to surmise a fair market value based on public auction data.”

Part of what makes the art market seem opaque is that it is based on trust—trust in a dealer or advisor who presumably has a great deal of knowledge and a sense of what’s up-and-coming—rather than on verifiable fact. Maybe that dealer just wants you to buy the work of an artist he currently represents. Maybe that advisor owes someone a favor. Fact-based means verifiable information about art, not your nose for sniffing out quality, your keen eye, your expertise or your connoisseurship. Wondeur’s model is fed massive amounts of information about art galleries and museums, as well as about artists and artworks, particularly from the past 75 years—such as where an artist’s work has been exhibited, which institutions have collected the work, prices earned by dealers for sales of artworks, the primary medium and most acclaimed period of the artist, as well as the critical response to the work and the gender and nationality of the artist—to identify patterns in the career trajectories of artists of all types, from emerging to world-famous, that can create comparables. In the words of Olivier Berger, co-founder of Wondeur, “A.I. can understand why and when the value of an artist’s work changes over time, bringing explainability to art values in the past, present and future.” He added that “we can deliver technology to impact investing. A.I. can see opportunities in the market that are not seen by others.”

A number of technology companies have entered this field. Some—ArtWorldInsights.com and ArtBnk—have been left by the wayside, while others are still in development. The remaining technology enterprises distinguish themselves in specific ways. Anne Rappa, national fine arts and specie practice leader at Manhattan-based insurance brokerage company Marsh McLennan Agency, told Observer that “Wondeur’s model is based on predictability related to a large data set. ArtDAI is focused on the part of the market that represents the majority of sales and a smaller data set.”

She added that A.I. will not replace “honest, knowledgeable, experienced experts” in evaluating risk or processing claims but noted that Artory, which recently merged with the art advisory and appraisal company Winston Art Group to become the Winston Artory Group, is “routinely engaged by insurance companies for loss and damage claims.”

Even more of a skeptic is Roman Kraussl, a professor of finance at Bayes Business School in London who specializes in the art market, who said that “fact-based is good, but there is no fundamental value to art. It is all subjective. I can say to someone, ‘This should be your price, but if paying more or less makes you happy, then that will be your price.’”

Nanne Dekking, co-founder and co-executive chairman of the Winston Artory Group, also does not see artificial intelligence replacing human expertise now or anytime soon. However, like Berger, he sees the need for more facts rather than subjectivity when ascertaining the value of art.

“As art and collectibles become a larger share of private portfolios, many collectors and their advisors face a persistent challenge, which is understanding the current value of these assets in a way that is reliable, defensible and actionable. Traditionally, valuations in the art market have been episodic, updated only when needed for a transaction, estate planning, or insurance. However, as wealth advisors, insurers and private clients increasingly seek to treat art like any other financial asset, there is growing demand for real-time, data-driven insight.”

Dekking describes himself as a “firm believer in human expertise,” especially when it comes to inspecting “the physical artwork rather than just betting on that A.I. would do that work for me.” He added, “We’re not saying A.I. does appraisals for us, but what A.I. does is help us find comparables, not only because of image recognition.” There is a vast body of information about artworks that can be compiled from published references, exhibitions and previous owners. “So there’s a whole range of different data sets that A.I. mines that make it possible for us to start to make connections between different artworks.”

A key element of Artory, which is now available to Winston’s client base, is its use of blockchain technology to register and validate research and due diligence information on artworks in a client’s collection. Blockchain creates tamper-proof, time-stamped records of ownership, provenance, value and condition that enhance opportunities for liquidity and make it easy for collectors to grant permissioned access to insurers, attorneys, financial advisors and estate planners.

The benefit of blockchain is that vital information is not stored on one computer file but in a more secure system. “If you look at Los Angeles and the fires,” Dekking said, “there were actually people who didn’t store information about their artworks in the cloud because they didn’t trust that, and they had their own computers in the houses with the records of these artworks, and literally everything was lost.”

There are awards and rankings for almost everything, and they’re everywhere. The automotive industry has the J.D. Power awards. Comms professionals vie for Cannes Lions. The NAMA Foundation, which celebrates advancements in the “convenience services industry,” grants a Coffee Legend of the Year award. Travel + Leisure publishes lists of the best beaches, Forbes ranks mattresses and the Taste Atlas Guide for the World’s Best Food has even identified the best potatoes in the world. The art industry, unsurprisingly, also has a wealth of awards and rankings.

This past July, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, received a major nod from U.S. News & World Report, which ranked it among the 26 best museums in the country. The company it keeps is varied, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, the Museum of Graffiti in Miami, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle and the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. The ranking is a “wonderful validation of all the hard work that has been done here,” David M. Roche, director of the museum, told Observer. The magazine is read nationally, and “within a day or two, we started receiving texts and emails from donors, colleagues at other institutions, state legislators, from foundations and corporations. People pay attention to these things.”

People also pay attention to artist awards, though just how much varies widely. Some awards (like the much-coveted Turner Prize) have the power to change careers; others, not so much. Simply being named one of the five finalists in 1990 for the Hubbard Museum of the American West’s Hubbard Art Award for Excellence was a game-changer for watercolorist Dean Mitchell. He didn’t win the $250,000 grand prize—it went to painter Howard Terpning—but the exposure and the fact that museum founders R.D. and Joan Dale Hubbard purchased his entry (Rowena) for $25,000 elevated his stature enormously. Before then, $10,000 was the most anyone had paid for one of his works.

The Hubbard Art Award was discontinued after 1991, and the museum closed in 2020, but Mitchell still regards the experience as a significant milestone because of “the caliber of the artists invited, the prize money involved and the fact that it was promoted so extensively,” he told Observer. “After the Hubbard, politicians contacted me, wanting to be seen with me. I had gallery owners and museum curators asking to show my work. And I could raise my prices in the marketplace.”

For photographer Wendy Ewald, being named a MacArthur Fellow in 1992 had a similar impact. The substantial cash award, now $800,000, is paid over five years, allowing artists, scholars and scientists who win what is often called the “genius grant” to pursue their work with fewer financial worries. Winning the MacArthur grant “made a huge difference for me,” she told Observer. “Up until then, people didn’t understand what I was doing, so it was such a relief to find out that someone did understand.”

With the money, Ewald was able to travel more—she has photographed people on five continents—and the visibility of winning the grant led to more opportunities to exhibit her images. “It has made my life so much easier,” she added—even 33 years later. “People know that I won the MacArthur and think, ‘she’s the real deal.’”

The most life-changing artist awards are those that come with a high-profile solo exhibition, a prestigious residency, a major grant or enough unrestricted funds to make working a day job unnecessary for a time. The now-discontinued biennial Hugo Boss Prize, established in 1996 by the Guggenheim and Hugo Boss, awarded not only a $100,000 purse but also a solo exhibition at the museum. Winners included Simone Leigh, Deana Lawson, Danh Vo and Anicka Yi—all names likely familiar to today’s contemporary collectors.

But other artist awards are little more than pats on the back. Dona Ann McAdams, a photographer who lives on a goat farm in Vermont, was named the 2025 recipient of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts by the Vermont Arts Council in July, an accolade that comes with no cash. Her selection hasn’t led to “any messages on my website asking to buy my photographs.” Little has changed in her life, although “now all my neighbors say, ‘Oh, that’s what she does.’ The hay guy came with some bushels of hay and said ‘Oh, congratulations.’ That’s something.”

Lorraine Watry, a watercolor artist and current president of the National Watercolor Society, has won awards from the American Watercolor Society, the Transparent Watercolor Society of America and the National Watercolor Society, and “in my experience, there has been no benefit to my career. I may let a collector know that a certain painting has won an award, but that award doesn’t get anyone to buy something.” She prefers awards that offer cash or merchandise—usually paint supplies—over ribbons and certificates.

Joel Popadics, a watercolor artist and current president of the American Watercolor Society, stated that awards such as those AWS offers have value to younger, emerging artists. “Getting something that says First Place, Second Place or Third Place lends younger artists credibility,” he said. “They may hope that the award impresses dealers and collectors, but it really reflects a consensus of opinion that your art is good.”

The problem, he said, is artists entering show after show in search of awards. “Entering shows at the start of your career, I recommend that. You see what other artists are doing, other artists see what you are doing and dealers and collectors see what you and everyone else are doing. But, after a while, you have to question why you are still entering these shows.”

Beaches, mattresses and potatoes don’t get cash awards, and they don’t have feelings to hurt if they lose, but artists generally need the money and often feel more hopeful about their prospects when acknowledged. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans recently concluded its annual Louisiana Contemporary juried exhibition, where four of the 50 artists selected were honored with awards. The first, second and third place winners received $1,000, $750 and $500, respectively, while Karen Ocker, who was awarded Best in Show, received $5,000. “I can’t really speak to whether awards are important to prospective buyers, dealers or curators,” Ocker told Observer. They are, however, “encouraging for artists to keep creating.”

More for art collectors

• Record Prices, New Buyers and Global Reach: Design’s Moment Has Arrived

• What’s Behind the Rise in Single-Owner Collection Sales

• How New Perspectives Art Partners Plans to Reshape the High-End Art Market

• From Dung to Dust, Unconventional Mediums Pose Challenges for Conservators and Collectors

• The Art Market’s Ethics Illusion: Professional Associations Talk Standards But Offer Few Protections

When art gallery owner Ileana Sonnabend died in 2007 at age 92, she left behind a substantial collection of paintings and sculptures that, over the next eight years, was sold privately and at auction for over half a billion dollars. One artwork, however—a 1959 mixed-media collage titled Canyon by Robert Rauschenberg—was not sold, because U.S. law forbade its sale. The work included a taxidermied bald eagle that the family of a friend of the artist had thrown out after he died, which Rauschenberg chose to incorporate into his painting. But the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act prohibits the killing, “possession, sale, purchase, barter, offer to sell, purchase or barter, transport, export or import, of any bald or golden eagle, alive or dead, including any part, nest, or egg, unless allowed by permit.”

The artwork could not be sold, and the Sonnabend family listed its value at zero. The Internal Revenue Service, however, claimed that—based on comparable Rauschenbergs—Canyon should be valued at $65 million and demanded the estate pay a tax of $29.2 million plus $11.7 million in penalties.

“It’s ridiculous,” Ralph Lerner, the tax lawyer who represented the family in its contest with the IRS, told Observer. “How can you have a qualified appraisal of something that isn’t allowed to be sold?” Eventually, a Solomon-like solution was negotiated in 2012: the artwork was donated to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, no charitable deduction was claimed by the heirs and no taxes or penalties were paid to the IRS.

It’s a rare situation, but one that arises from time to time—something that once cost a fortune is now worth nothing, simply because it can’t be sold. This can apply to a range of objects, including most ivory (such as carved scrimshaw), tortoise shells, protected animal horns or artworks with questionable provenance—like antiquities potentially looted from Asian temples, Egyptian burial sites, Native American reservations or tribal regions in African nations, as well as what is commonly referred to as “Holocaust art,” or artworks stolen from Jewish collectors by the Nazis.

What to do with biological specimens

Selling individual items or entire curio collections may be legally impossible, leaving owners with few options beyond bequeathing them to heirs or donating them to museums. These may sound like solutions, but they often aren’t. Heirs might not want the objects—or the legal headache that comes with them. Museums may reject such gifts to avoid criticism or potential lawsuits. “You have to consider the legal restrictions of marketability when doing estate planning,” said New York lawyer William Pearlstein, referring to one client’s $10 million collection of antique ivory acquired during the 1970s and 1980s—none of it documented as to age or origin. “The heirs came to us, wondering what they could do.”

His advice: “Undocumented items are not marketable, and I think they wrote it down to zero.” He added, “We never heard back from them,” so he assumed the IRS accepted that position. (A spokesperson for the IRS declined to confirm what its typical practices are in such cases.)

Ivory laws are strict because the goal is to shut down the market entirely and stop the poaching of African and Asian elephants, which are listed as threatened and endangered species, respectively, under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Only certain ivory items can be sold. Federal regulations established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—an agency within the Department of the Interior—permit the interstate sale of ivory only if the object is an antique (over 100 years old), has not been altered since before December 27, 1973, or is a musical instrument, firearm or piece of furniture containing less than 200 grams of ivory.

All of this requires documentation, although exactly what constitutes acceptable proof isn’t always clear. A dated government permit from the country of origin, a pre-ban photograph of the item, a will, a sworn statement or even a letter from a relative mentioning the object could suffice, but the burden of proof falls on the seller to demonstrate that the ivory meets one of these exceptions.

There are state, federal and international laws regulating the trade in endangered species. Judith Wallace, a partner at the New York law firm Carter Ledyard & Milburn, advises clients to consider all applicable jurisdictions “before transferring or transporting any item, but also in the planning stages so that they can understand whether a collection has value” and in “assembling the correct documentation.”

Many owners lack such documentation. An ivory object may indeed be over 100 years old, but without clear records—like a diary entry, photograph or detailed receipt—it may be legally unsellable. Further complicating matters, most owners don’t know the species of origin. That matters, because different laws govern the sale of ivory from elephants, walruses, whales, hippos and warthogs across state and national borders.

Without documentation, you may legally own an object, but selling is out of the question—and museums with strict acquisition policies likely won’t take it either.

One path forward is scientific testing. Owners can commission DNA testing to identify species or carbon dating to determine an item’s age. State universities typically offer these services, with prices ranging from a few hundred dollars for species testing to $500-750 for carbon dating. However, the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington refuses to conduct such tests. “It serves to promote a trade that is helping animals become extinct,” said director Samuel Wasser. “I think the best thing to do with ivory is to just destroy it.”

Destruction is, in fact, the option some owners choose. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service periodically hosts public “ivory destruction events.” Since ivory does not burn easily, it is usually crushed.

What to do with looted and banned objects

When it comes to antiquities and other cultural property, a broader set of laws may apply—especially the 1970 UNESCO treaty, which seeks not to destroy but to return looted or illegally exported items to their country of origin. Unlike ivory or scrimshaw, which owners may legally retain even if unsellable, antiquities can be seized by the government if proven to have been stolen. In such cases, the title remains with the country of origin. The burden of proof rests with the government to show that an object was imported illegally.

If cultural property is seized—such as by U.S. Customs—taxpayers cannot claim a loss, since the objects were never lawfully theirs. Buyers may also face criminal charges if they made false statements about the items when importing them.

Selling questionable objects can be a moral and legal gray zone. “Reputable auction houses and galleries are absolutely reluctant to handle anything with questionable provenance,” Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a partner at the Boston-based law firm Sullivan & Worcester, told Observer. “Certainly, Sotheby’s and Christie’s restitution research departments are exemplary, and every lot they sell is examined with that in mind.” Still, the Art & Antique Dealers League of America challenged a New York State law that is stricter than federal regulations, defending the trade in dead endangered species to the extent it remains legal. And Lerner noted, “Dealers may handle consignments of this type if they think a possible legal claim is remote.”

One potential remedy, according to Lerner, is to file an “action to clear title”—a lawsuit that forces another party to prove you do not have legal ownership. The challenge is figuring out whom to sue.

Museum donation isn’t a catch-all fix

Whether a museum accepts a donation of an undocumented object often depends on the institution. In its 2013 “Guidelines on the Acquisition of Archaeological Material and Ancient Art,” the Association of Art Museum Directors acknowledged how difficult it can be to verify recent provenance and affirmed that “museums should have the right to exercise their institutional responsibility to make informed and defensible judgments.” The association also maintains an antiquities registry where member museums are encouraged to post newly acquired items lacking documentation.

“The Museum of Modern Art really wanted that Rauschenberg,” said Lerner. Donating such works can offer more than one benefit. “Since donation of such problematic works to a museum or other charitable institution means that their purported market value is not included in calculating the estate’s overall value—and thus the estate tax owed—our advice is to donate the works in question,” Daniel H. Weiner, a partner at the New York law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, told Observer.

Wallace defended MoMA’s acceptance of Canyon, noting that “the Rauschenberg case highlights that artworks can have intrinsic artistic value, and I would also argue that the repulsion that one may feel upon seeing the taxidermied endangered species incorporated into the artwork is one of the many legitimate emotional responses to a complex artwork that justifies its public exhibition.”

Still, museums today often maintain strict policies barring the acquisition of undocumented antiquities. “Policies that may prohibit or restrict museum acquisition of antiquities that do not have proof of a pre-1970 provenance or proof of legal export from the country of origin,” explained Patty Gerstenblith, director of the Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law at DePaul University College of Law.

There is also a stigma attached to owning problematic objects. The association with elephant poaching or temple looting can be embarrassing—and lawyers may leverage that shame to pressure settlements. “Especially if the owner is prominent,” Lerner said, “an allegation can be exploited.”

If a foreign government succeeds in reclaiming an object donated to a museum, the IRS does not rescind the charitable deduction claimed by the donor. “The government goes by the facts that are true on the date of the donation, and under the IRS regulations, the IRS is not supposed to use post-donation facts,” said Lerner. “Museums require donors to state that their donations are free and clear of any claims and liens, and unless the taxpayers intentionally misrepresented something, they should have nothing to fear.”

He may be more confident about that than the IRS, which, according to the spokesperson, evaluates such cases individually. The bottom line is that owning objects made from endangered species or looted artworks and antiquities sets the stage for years of legal complications. While an object may have once held great value, the most reasonable course when faced with a restitution claim may simply be to give it back.

More for art collectors

• Record Prices, New Buyers and Global Reach: Design’s Moment Has Arrived
• What’s Behind the Rise in Single-Owner Collection Sales
• How New Perspectives Art Partners Plans to Reshape the High-End Art Market
• From Dung to Dust, Unconventional Mediums Pose Challenges for Conservators and Collectors
• The Art Market’s Ethics Illusion: Professional Associations Talk Standards But Offer Few Protections

Generalizing, one can both say that art depicts life, and that for many people, sports are life. Yet sports are rarely the subject of works found in art galleries and museums. Indeed, it is a theme many artists actively avoid. Stadiums, ballparks and arenas may sell countless posters of athletes and teams—images montaged by painters and reproduced in the thousands—but these fall into the realm of merchandise, not fine art. At the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, where the Masters tournament is played, you can buy posters from the Lee Wybranski Collection or the Steve Lotus Collection, which depict fairways and greens. These prints sell briskly, but it is doubtful that curators at the Whitney or the Museum of Modern Art would ever have considered either Wybranski or Lotus for exhibition.

Case closed? Can we generalize, too, that sports art isn’t serious art? Perhaps, but the story is more complicated. Sports as a subject of art is not unheard of, though examples in major museums are few. In 1816, Francisco Goya published a 33-work series of etchings on bullfighting, “La Tauromaquia,” and Claes Oldenburg’s 101-foot-tall baseball bat sculpture, the 1977 Batcolumn, stands in downtown Chicago. The International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, has an entire art collection—its highlight is a screenprint of Chris Evert by Andy Warhol. One of the most famous sports paintings in art history is George Bellows’ 1923-24 Dempsey and Firpo, which commemorates a boxing match won by Jack Dempsey, even though the painting shows him being knocked through the ropes.

Other artists turned to sporting imagery on occasion. Benjamin West painted five cricket players in his 1763 The Cricketers, which sold for £1.2 million in 2022 and now hangs in Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. Thomas Eakins created his 1871 Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Raoul Dufy painted and printed scenes of horse racing. These, however, were singular efforts rather than central themes in their work.

Perhaps the most celebrated artist to make sports a specialty was LeRoy Neiman (1921-2012). He painted football, baseball, boxing, horse racing, car racing and portraits of athletes, and he was the official painter of five Olympic games spanning from 1972 to 2010. His works, originals and reproductions alike, often appear at sports-themed auctions, though less at international houses like Bonhams, Christie’s, Phillips or Sotheby’s and more at regional houses in the U.S. Chicago-based Freeman’s | Hindman has sold dozens of Neiman’s works, ranging from an undated lithograph of a matador (Matador) that sold for $750 to a 1973 billiards painting (Ball Break) that reached $51,200.

In 2023, Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold a 10-foot painting of basketball players created for the cover of the 1977 NBA All-Star Game program (Legends of Basketball) for $186,000. Norman Rockwell’s 1948 painting of three umpires debating whether to call a game for rain (Tough Call), used on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post the following year, sold for $1.68 million at Heritage in 2017. Rockwell was never a sports specialist, but he treated the subject with a seriousness others avoided.

Seattle’s Greg Kucera Gallery has for years held summer exhibitions devoted to baseball art. Earlier this year, the Norton Museum of Art staged “Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing,” which featured works by Eadweard Muybridge, George Bellows,  Ed Paschke and Jonas Wood, though nothing by Neiman. “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture,” which debuted at SFMOMA, opens at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on September 13 with works by Ernie Barnes, Derek Fordjour, Julie Mehretu and Hank Willis Thomas and runs through January 26.

Likely, no artist sets out intending to specialize in sports, but commissions can shift careers. Debbie Sampson, a painter in Kissimmee, Florida, entered a contest for a ticket to a Florida Marlins game and later painted one of the players based on a program photo. When she offered the painting to the team, “suddenly other players on the team were asking me to do paintings of them.” Word spread, leading to commissions from Carolina Panthers players, and eventually Sampson moved from martial arts subjects to full-time sports paintings sold at games.

Gender bias complicated her career. “People loved my work, but when it was time to pick an artist for a commission, they always chose a man,” she told Observer. “I started signing only my last name on paintings, so that people wouldn’t know I was a woman.”

Other artists’ careers developed in similar ways. Brian Fox of Fall River, Massachusetts, became an official Commemorative Artist for Major League Baseball. British-born, Los Angeles-based sculptor Andy Scott began with traditional animal forms but drew commissions from soccer clubs including Glasgow Rangers and Manchester City FC.

Fox told Observer that had to “figure out how to make a living,” but commissions linked to the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots solved that problem. His connection to the Patriots, in particular, came about through Matt Light’s Light Foundation. Fox painted portraits of Tom Brady and Wes Welker and donated them for fundraising, which led to introductions across the organization. He later did similar charity work for causes tied to Curt Schilling, gaining press coverage and new commissions. “I made sure to be on stage when my paintings were being auctioned off, so that people could see who did it.” Soon after, Major League Baseball selected him as the official All-Star Game artist for three years running. His work later extended to horse racing and fundraising commissions for celebrities like Steven Tyler and Mark Wahlberg.

Original works by sports artists can reach into five and six figures. Fox’s paintings often fetch anywhere from $8,500 to $60,000. Charles Fazzino, who has created art for more than 25 Super Bowls, 20 MLB All-Star Games and numerous other sporting events, prices his works between $20,000 and $150,000. His hand-painted baseballs and football helmets sell for anywhere from $1,200 to $10,000. “We consider Charles as having been the contemporary to pick up the ball from LeRoy Neiman,” Julie Maner, Fazzino’s director of business affairs, told Observer. Institutions such as the International Olympic Museum in Lausanne and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown have acquired his works.

That said, the secondary market for sports art remains thin. “There is a secondary market for my work,” Fox said. “I know people buy them and sell them. I just don’t know who or where.”

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Rago/Wright, a conglomerate of six independent auction houses across the country, has what the company’s chief executive officer calls a “cat” button on its website. C-A-T isn’t an acronym but rather a nod to the number of bidders who try to walk back winning bids by blaming their cats for jumping on their keyboards and accidentally clicking the “send” button.

“We’ve put a lock on the bid button, so that bids can’t take place accidentally,” said Richard Wright. “You now have to unlock the bid button so that you can place a legitimate bid.” The other option is to close the door to keep the cat out of the room where someone is bidding online, but auction staff can’t be everywhere. Those looking for an excuse can always find a pet.

Wright “really doesn’t like it” when someone tries to renege on a winning lot by claiming their wife didn’t care for it. He added, “I mean, come on, do you really need to blame your wife?”

Buyers attempting to back out of bids or avoid paying for items is nothing new in the auction world. Wright estimated that one percent of Rago/Wright’s auction sales become problematic when buyers either can’t or won’t pay. While one percent might seem negligible, the house sells tens of thousands of lots each year, resulting in hundreds of problematic transactions. The issue has grown in recent years due to the rise of online bidding platforms. In-person attendees can’t hide behind a screen—they raise a paddle or a hand as bids escalate. But those bidding remotely may be less familiar with auction protocols and the binding nature of a winning bid.

To participate in most auctions, prospective buyers must register in advance, provide valid identification such as a driver’s license and supply a credit card or bank account number. Some houses also require a registration fee or deposit. Jay Frederick Krehbiel, executive chairman of Freeman | Hindman auction house in Chicago, told Observer that “we will also ask for deposits in advance of bidding,” with deposit amounts based on the estimated value of the lots in question.

Still, some “people fail to understand that they are subject to a binding contract,” Joshua F. Eldred, president and chief executive officer of Eldred’s auction house in Massachusetts, told Observer. “When yours is the winning bid, you legally own it,” whatever that “it” may be.

That said, not every “oops” bidder is trying to game the system. Eldred noted that some buyers experience legitimate hardships between the time they bid and the time of payment, including medical issues. Others may be serious collectors who accidentally bid on the wrong lot, or who get swept up in the moment. “The bids can go up very quickly,” Eldred said. “At one point, it is going up at $100 intervals, and then it is going up at $1,000 intervals” before the bidder realizes what’s happening. Auctions are high-energy events, and it’s not uncommon for bidders to get carried away. Newcomers might not realize that the hammer price—the final bid—doesn’t reflect the full cost. State taxes, buyer’s premiums and shipping can double the total. That $150 print may end up costing $275 all told.

Auction houses aren’t heartless, and they often try to work with bidders in tough situations. The first course of action is typically to contact the underbidder to see if they’re still interested in the lot. “Underbidders almost never agree to pay what they offered before,” Wright said. “They know that the sale didn’t go through, and they now have leverage to get a lower price.”

There are also bad-faith actors. Wright pointed out that some people register to bid with no intention of paying. “They think that they can get a piece released to them without having actually paid for it,” he said—something that never happens.

When a buyer defaults, the auction house usually enforces the sale. It may allow installment payments, paying the consignor up front and recouping the funds over time, or it may relist the item in a future sale, with the defaulting bidder now treated as the consignor. The consignor may recover less than the original price, since items that reappear at auction are often perceived as tarnished. “What’s wrong with it that someone is trying to sell it so soon?” Wright asked. Still, recouping something is better than nothing.

In some cases, litigation is the only path forward. Eldred said his auction house has pursued buyers in small claims court and once filed a lawsuit against a buyer who backed out of a $40,000 purchase—a case that was settled before reaching trial. There’s no set dollar threshold for taking legal action, but the high cost of litigation means lawsuits usually involve expensive lots and come only after other avenues have failed.

Late last year, for example, Christie’s filed suit against Milan-based real estate investor Nanni Bassani Antivari, who won a bid for Jean Siméon Chardin’s 1760 painting Le Melon Entame (The Cut Melon) for €26.7 million ($28 million) and then failed to pay.

“Litigation is in nobody’s interest—not the seller’s, not the auction house’s and certainly not the buyer’s—but it does happen,” Krehbiel said. In one case, a young man placed a bid using his “parents’ account— and I would note it was an adult child—and, in that case, we worked with the parent on payment terms over many months.” In another, involving “a Chinese vase where the buyer decided to walk away, we kept a $25,000 deposit.”

Lawsuits are generally seen as a last resort and a mark of failure by auction houses, which try to exhaust all other options. None of the major houses—Bonhams, Christie’s, Phillips or Sotheby’s—responded to questions for this article. But legal actions happen all the same. In 2015, Christie’s sued New York City dealer Jose Mugrabi after he placed a $37,125,000 winning bid for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s The Field Next to the Other Road on behalf of a client, paid an initial $5 million installment and then failed to pay the rest. The year prior, Sotheby’s brought a lawsuit against Michael Jackson after one of his representatives bid $1.6 million for two paintings by Adolphe William Bouguereau—L’Amour A L’Epine and Les Agneaux—which the singer later declined to purchase.

In 2020, art dealer Joseph Nahmad sued Phillips for backing out of a $5 million guarantee on a Rudolf Stingel painting, citing the pandemic as the cause. Just last month, Phillips sued collector David Mimran for failing to honor his guarantee after a $15 million Jackson Pollock painting failed to meet its reserve.

These disputes aren’t as rare as one might think—they’re just kept quiet until court documents make them public. Another consequence auction houses can impose is blacklisting defaulting bidders. While houses maintain their own internal no-bid lists, major online bidding platforms like Artnet Auctions, LiveAuctioneers and Invaluable keep broader databases of banned buyers that also prevent them from bidding with affiliated companies.

Which is all to say, think carefully before you push that button.

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Things go missing. Who hasn’t lost a pair of eyeglasses or their keys? No one is perfect, and so let’s be forgiving of others, right? Maybe not, when what goes missing is artwork consigned to a gallery or auction house. Unsurprisingly, gallery owners and auction house staff have little interest in recalling instances of lost consigned items, but the many lawyers who represent collectors in art transactions are all too familiar and willing to speak to the frequency and the consequences. Galleries, in particular, handle a large volume of inventory—some on display, some in the back room, some in onsite storage, some offsite fine art warehouses—and tracking isn’t always foolproof. What if an employee miscoded a work in the database? What happens when two paintings are accidentally crated together?

The good news is that “most galleries and auctioneers have good inventory systems,” Michael McCullough, a partner at the New York law firm Pearlstein & McCullough, told Observer. “It’s more likely that objects are stolen, and that’s why they are missing.”

Bad behavior is, of course, not unheard of in the gallery world. “We have handled a number of matters for collectors and investors where their work was sold under a consignment agreement, but the gallery or dealer simply failed to turn over the proceeds due to the owner,” said Kate Lucas, special counsel at Grossman LLP in New York. “We have represented numerous collectors who entrusted artwork they own to a gallery to be sold, but the gallery subsequently—and without the owner’s permission—pledged that artwork as collateral on a loan for the gallery’s own benefit. When this happens, the lender often takes actual physical possession of the supposedly collateralized artwork.”

In 2010, an art dealer in Illinois claimed he placed an original 1893 Toulouse-Lautrec poster in a mailing tube that was either misdelivered or discarded. Investigators later found that his home was in foreclosure at the time the lithograph vanished. A few years earlier, in 2006, the Philadelphia Museum of Art consigned two paintings—Maurice Prendergast’s 1919-23 oil, The Harbor, and Arthur B. Davies’ undated watercolor Mountain Landscape—to New York’s Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. Gallery owner Lawrence Salander sold them within weeks to Davis & Langdale Co. for $1.5 million. He never informed the museum, which only learned of the sale in 2009 after the gallery declared bankruptcy.

Larry Salander went to jail, as did Inigo Philbrick, who was convicted for selling artworks or using them as loan collateral without owner consent. But the consignors involved with those dealers were never paid, and this is where things get tricky.

A dealer who sells consigned artwork and fails to remit proceeds to the original owner is guilty of “conversion.” Yet, as Dorit Straus, an advisor to art insurance clients, told Observer, “some insurance companies will not consider it a theft and will not indemnify the owner because when giving a work to a dealer on consignment the original owner actually ‘passes’ title to the dealer, and so it’s regarded as a business transaction and not a theft that would be covered by insurance.”

If an artwork is lost or damaged while consigned to a gallery, that gallery’s insurance should cover the loss, according to Dean Nicyper, a partner at New York’s Withers Bergman. Still, he recommends consignors maintain their own insurance “as a back-up, in case the gallery doesn’t have enough coverage or its policy has exclusions.” He recalled a case in which a large-scale Frank Stella was destroyed in transit—“there were four insurance companies involved.”

Diana Wierbicki, who chairs the art and cultural property division at Loeb & Loeb, agreed that owners should maintain their policies even when artworks are out of their possession. When buying fine art insurance, she advised, “it is important to review the insurance policy to make sure that there are not any insurance exclusions that would prevent you from making an insurance claim. Exclusions like ‘inventory shortage’ need to be explored further to make sure coverage still applies when a work goes missing.”

How insurance companies treat these claims is rarely straightforward, and policies can often be negotiated. In 2007 and 2008, longtime art collectors Sam and Helen Zell sent three paintings to L.A. dealer David Tunkl—Balthus’ 1989-94 The Cat with Mirror III, Fernand Léger’s 1923 Study for the Tugboat and the 1930 Mona Lisa with Keys (First State)—with the understanding that he would seek offers for their approval. Instead, Tunkl sold the works outright, only informing the Zells in 2009. He later claimed he had already spent the money and couldn’t repay them. Fortunately, the Zells had coverage through New Jersey-based Chubb and received $5,775,000.

In contrast, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s insurer, AXA Art Insurance, denied its $1.5 million claim regarding the Salander-O’Reilly consignment. According to AXA’s attorney, the works weren’t stolen or damaged. “Good title passed to the new buyer. The problem was that Salander-O’Reilly didn’t pay the museum what it was supposed to, and for that, it should sue the dealer, not the insurance company, which didn’t cover this eventuality in its policy.”

Consignors may sue for negligence or breach of fiduciary duty, but if the dealer has declared bankruptcy, there may be little left to recover. Lucas recommends filing a UCC-1 financing statement when handing over valuable objects, which publicly establishes the consignor as the rightful owner, even if the dealer has physical possession. Filing the form is inexpensive—in New York, it costs $20, and in New Jersey, $25—and can be done online. It puts the consignor first in line in bankruptcy court to reclaim the artwork or receive compensation.

Fewer artworks go missing from auction houses than from galleries, mostly because auctioneers sell items on fixed dates and don’t hold them for months or years. Gallery consignments tend to linger, which increases risk. Collectors who want quick sales tend to stay in close contact with dealers, reducing—but not eliminating—the chance that things simply vanish. Artists, however, are the most frequent victims of missing consigned work.

Artists often consign numerous pieces at once, especially for exhibitions, and their relationships with dealers can last decades. “Artists don’t always keep track of what they’ve consigned,” said Ralph Lerner, a New York lawyer specializing in art law. “They most often find that things are missing when they break up with a dealer.”

Resolving such disputes is rarely simple. “The artist says, ‘I gave you that painting,’ and the dealer says, ‘I gave it back to you’ or ‘I never received it,’” Lerner said. Inconsistent memories, lack of documentation, or outright dishonesty often hinder resolution. Lawsuits may be filed—though Lerner noted that “the cost of litigation may be greater than the value of the art”—or passed along to a gallery’s insurer.

Insurance, however, is no cure-all. Leila Amineddoleh, founder of Amineddoleh & Associates LLC, a New York City-based law firm specializing in art, cultural heritage and intellectual property law, explained that “lost art is valued like other art, appraised according to comparables. The sad reality is that emerging artists may not have comparables, and so proving the value of their works can be challenging, and thus they may not receive the appropriate compensation from a gallery.”

Valuing lost artwork is further complicated by auction house consignment agreements. Daniel Weiner, head of litigation at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, told Observer that “auction houses usually limit by contract their liability for lost works. Christie’s, for example, typically limits it to the proceeds of sale (if the work is lost after its sale) or the mid-point between the high and low estimates (if the work is lost prior to its sale at auction).”

Unlike collectors, artists in New York and thirty-one other states are not required to file a UCC-1 form to assert their rights in a gallery bankruptcy. They receive automatic priority over creditors. Still, that doesn’t protect against poor documentation or misplaced trust.

Amineddoleh recalled one client who lost multiple works after trusting a longtime dealer friend without a formal agreement. “The problem was that she had a close friendship with the dealer, and so they never entered into a formal agreement. What’s more, the dealer concealed information from the artist for years, concocting excuses about her health and not having access to her storage unit. By the time the artist realized there was a problem, the statute of limitations had expired, and there was nothing to be done. We were able to recover some of the value of the art that went missing, but we couldn’t recover the full amount because the artist did not have a contract with the dealer, the prices were not clearly assigned to the works, and details of their agreement were in dispute.”

As always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Consignors—and artists, too—should assume little, document everything and insure what matters.

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Alasdair Nichol, deputy chairman of Freeman’s | Hindman auction house, calls it a “ghoulish” area, but it is one that he knows exists: “There often is a death watch for older artists and those believed to be in poor health.” Auctioneers, art dealers and gallery owners and most especially art collectors pay close attention to obituaries, based on what he called a popular fallacy that the prices for artists’ works will rise significantly on their passing. “A person I know has been buying up Richters”—referring to the 93-year-old German painter Gerhard Richter—“I assume with the intention of selling these things when he dies,” Nichol told Observer, adding that he remembers “a mini-boom” for memorabilia related to the singer David Bowie “prior to his death” in 2016.

He isn’t alone in seeing this focus on the age and health of artists who are well on in years. Betty Krulik, a private art dealer in New York City and former head of the paintings department at Christie’s, and Anthony Grant, a private dealer in Manhattan and former vice chairman of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, saw this phenomenon in the past and present. “There is a mercantile attitude about older artists,” Grant said, as dealers look to sell and collectors seek to buy before their death takes place. “People say, ‘the artist is getting older, so I better get some of his work before he dies and the price goes up,’” Krulik confirmed.

Zachary E. Wirsum, senior vice president and head of postwar and contemporary art at Freeman | Hindman, told Observer that a few years ago he had been “working hard” to arrange a consignment of a landscape painting by Richard Mayhew (1924-2024) but “was told by the potential consigner that he wanted to wait until the artist died.”

It is the Vincent van Gogh story—that artists might starve during their lives, but when they die, their work becomes sought-after and valuable. Certainly, there are instances when prices escalate dramatically upon an artist’s death, one of the most notable examples being the work of Canadian artist Matthew Wong (1984-2019), whose colorful, dreamy landscape paintings garnered considerable praise in the few years he showed his work in galleries in New York where they sold for tens of thousands of dollars. The year following his suicide, Sotheby’s sold his 2018 painting The Realm of Appearances for $1.82 million, well above the auction house’s $60,000-80,000 estimate, and Phillips auctioned another 2018 painting, River at Dusk, for $4.86 million, four times its estimate. Lightning does strike.

Death, however, is not a good predictor of value. Alasdair Nichol is correct in that this is a “ghoulish” subject—and “doesn’t necessarily have a positive impact” on an artist’s prices and market, according to Richard Wright, chief executive officer at Rago/Wright auctions. “In fact, it is more correct to say that when an artist dies, his market tends to die with him.” At least for a while. The prices for works by such luminaries as Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol and Andrew Wyeth slumped or were stagnant for a number of years following their deaths but later rebounded.

For instance, in 1979, the year after Rockwell died, his painting The Bookworm sold for $65,000. It wasn’t until the 1990s that prices reached the high six figures and, following the 1999-2001 nationwide touring retrospective “Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People,” prices surged, with his 1943 Rosie the Riveter earning $4.95 million at Sotheby’s in 2002 and his 1957 The Rookie fetching $22.5 million at Christie’s in 2014. Anyone who had rushed to buy Rockwell’s work prior to his 1978 death or shortly after would have had to wait quite a while for their dreams of riches to be realized.

A major reason for prices of paintings by Rockwell, O’Keeffe, Picasso, Rauschenberg, Warhol and Wyeth staying flat for so long is that so many people who had one rushed them to galleries and auction houses, effectively overwhelming the market. “A lot of people speculate that an artist’s death results in an upward tick in pricing for their works,” said Daniela Lazo-Cedre, senior specialist in 20th and 21st century art at Bonhams, which results in a flood of material to the market.” A glut creates uncertainty about how much material is out there and how much each piece should cost. “People come out of the woodworks with consignments when an artist dies,” dealer Katherine Degn, former director of New York’s Kraushaar Galleries, told Observer. “Flooding the market is never a good idea.”

And it isn’t just collectors who flood the market; heirs do, too. The widows of sculptors Sir Jacob Epstein, Frederic Remington and Julio González inadvertently hurt the market for their late husbands’ works when they began recasting their pieces—failing to keep good records on how many reproductions were made with Epstein and Remington, failing to label the recasts as posthumous with González. The son of painter Thomas Hart Benton put many of the original works by his father that were in his possession on the market at the same time shortly after the artist’s death in 1975. The market for Benton’s work recovered, but it took about 15 years.

“Whether or not artists’ works rise or decline in value depends a lot on how they have organized their estates,” New York art advisor Susan Brundage told Observer. It also depends on how those in charge of their estates tend to them. “Children of artists may not know what to do with the artworks. They may fight about them or dump them on the market.”

Presumably, scarcity would suggest that those still available would increase in value, but that kind of economics doesn’t always hold sway in the art trade. While alive, an artist continues to hold the promise of creating something of significant interest, and some artists have big personalities that are part of the marketing and sales of their work. Zachary Wirsum noted that it often helps to have “the artist around to control marketing. In fortunate circumstances, there is an estate that will promote the artist, but the motivation on the part of galleries to display and sell the work of artists may not be as aggressive if they’re not around to push their dealers.”

Once dead, that promise is gone and the artist is now reassessed in terms of a “legacy”—that person’s place in art history and his or her influence on other artists of that time or subsequently. The artist’s importance is likely to be measured by exhibitions at galleries and especially museums, as well as through publications that make the case that the artist is a major figure in culture. It takes time, often years, for the market to absorb all the artworks that were sold following an artist’s death and, during that time, a reevaluation needs to happen.

That doesn’t just happen but is the result of effort by family members, dealers, estates, scholars and museum curators who make the case—through exhibitions and publications—as well as well-planned sales for the artists. Estates often have quite a few artworks to sell but, Wirsum said, they may not be the best at representing the work. First, they are objects that did not sell, perhaps because they are not as good as those that had sold and they may be more experimental and “less iconic” works. Promoting those pieces may not be to the artist’s advantage.

Some artists don’t seem to make the cut. Richard Wright noted that painter Ed Paschke’s (1939-2004) “shows did very well during his lifetime, but his estate has struggled.” Betty Krulik identified artists Chaim Gross (1902-91) and David Levine (1926-2009) as “very good figurative artists who did fine during their lifetimes, but they were not household names or great luminaries.” The verdict would seem to be that these three were all minor talents. Like Richard Wright, she said that “most artists’ markets die with the artists, unless there is a dealer behind them who’s holding the flag high.”

Achieving posthumous recognition can be an uphill battle. Kayla Carlsen, director of the Albany Museum of History & Art and former head of American art sales at Sotheby’s, said that galleries that represented now deceased artists go out of business, or they lose interest in artists who are no longer around to produce art. “Tastes change, and we live in a time when people are fixated on contemporary artists.” It is often the case that the principal buyers of living artists are collectors who are the same age as the artists. Older people are not as avid collectors as they had been earlier on, and the job of dealers and the estates of artists is to convince a new generation that such-and-such talents need to be looked at again.

None of this is news to Zachary Wirsum, whose father, Karl Wirsum (1939-2021), was a painter and sculptor “who predominantly supported himself during his career through the sale of his art, although he also taught at the Art Institute of Chicago.” After his death, there was a “dip in the market, less interest,” which he thought could be corrected by a more aggressive promotion by the estate, “but that would be a full-time job for me, and I already have a full-time job.” Last year, New York’s Derek Eller Gallery and the Matthew Marks Gallery partnered to hold a show of Karl Wirsum’s paintings and sculptures, “which was a success critically, less so financially.”

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If the approximately 1,000 active volunteers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art suddenly vanished, “the museum would go on without them, but our volunteers really are a big help,” Jaime Neary, who leads the volunteer program, told Observer. “They make a big difference in the visitor experience.” Those volunteers greet visitors in the museum’s Great Hall and help them plan their visits. They offer free public tours of the galleries—thirty-five each day—and support family programs, especially at the Met’s 81st Street Studio, where hands-on activities abound. Behind the scenes, they assist in the library, membership and curatorial departments. While the museum has a paid staff of 2,000, much of the visitor-facing experience, aside from the guards reminding guests not to get too close to the art, is shaped by docents and greeters there to explain what visitors are seeing.

If the current crop of volunteers disappeared, Neary added, their roles would be filled quickly. “We get hundreds of applicants, and we’re always looking for more.” The same holds true across many of the country’s museums, historic houses, botanical gardens and zoos, where volunteers often outnumber paid employees. Queens Botanical Garden, for instance, has 3,000 annual volunteers who contribute to education, public programs and horticulture, literally getting their hands dirty.

At many institutions, a significant percentage of volunteers are already members and have some familiarity with the collection. But deep subject knowledge isn’t required because training, whether informal or rigorous, is nearly always provided. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, says “no prior art history knowledge is required,” as volunteers undergo a three-month training program that includes classes with homework and practice gallery tours.

Neary said “knowledge of art is not required” but noted that curiosity and interest in the subject help. Language skills are also a plus. The Met’s current volunteers speak thirty-three different languages, including Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Arabic—all of which she said are particularly valuable in helping international visitors feel welcome.

The first step in becoming a museum volunteer is usually completing an online application, followed by an interview conducted via video, phone or in person, and then the aforementioned training. At New York’s Jewish Museum, prospective docents are interviewed by their future supervisors, and they are asked, explained deputy director of education and programs Nelly Benedek, to “bring an object to their interview and speak about it for about five minutes, including providing a formal analysis of the object and information about its social or historical context.” It could be a work of art, a family photo or a meaningful household item.

The goal, she said, is to assess how articulate, observant and prepared the applicant is. “Do they know how to zoom in and analyze an object aesthetically and formally, then contextualize it? Are they making thoughtful and relevant references? What is their communication style—do they make eye contact, are they warm and engaging, can they connect with diverse audiences? Did they conduct research?”

Volunteers also undergo a criminal offender record information (CORI) background check. Institutions want to ensure a good personality fit and confirm a candidate’s willingness to commit to showing up on time and working a consistent number of hours each week. A spokesperson for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, told Observer that “the vast majority of people who get through the virtual meeting, application and interview process are approved.”

Reliability is obviously a top priority. Most institutions provide all the necessary training; they just need to know that volunteers will actually show up. Boston’s MFA requires a commitment of three to five hours per week for at least a year, while the Smithsonian Institution’s Ambassador Program asks for at least thirty three-hour shifts per season—fifteen shifts for weekend-only volunteers. Some volunteers give just a few hours weekly; others, like Patrick Horrigan, commit much more. A former English professor at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus, Horrigan now averages twenty-five hours each week as a Met docent, leading highlights tours year-round, LGBTQ-themed tours in June and occasional private tours. “Being a tour guide feels like a natural extension of my job as a university professor,” he told Observer.

At the Smithsonian Institution’s American Museum of Natural History, training covers science content, teaching techniques and public engagement. Behind-the-scenes volunteers receive specialized instruction tailored to their roles, delivered through lectures, interactive sessions, demonstrations and guided activities.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art requires prospective guides to attend weekly training sessions for two years. The curriculum includes art appreciation, art history, knowledge of the museum’s collection and visitor engagement skills. These sessions are led by the Division of Education, curatorial staff and experienced guides. After the first year, trainees serve as intern guides, further refining their skills and assisting at information desks.

Qualifications for volunteer roles—especially public-facing ones like gallery guides and info desk staff—prioritize communication skills over content knowledge. At the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the ideal volunteer is described as a “good listener” who demonstrates a commitment to “diversity, equity, access and inclusion” and is “willing to embrace an educational model that is audience-centered. (Note: Museum Guides do not lecture.)” In short, it’s not about the guide—it’s about the audience.

Volunteers must be at least 18 years old, which rarely poses an issue. Benedek noted that “we don’t ask people their age,” but said most are Jewish and between 50 and 90. The Jewish Museum’s docent corps is fiercely loyal. “It’s important to note that we’ve only had four classes of docents in the history of the program, which dates back to the 1970s. That’s because our docents tend to stay. They are very devoted to the Jewish Museum and their role as guides.”

According to the spokesperson, the volunteer community at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, “skews female and older. ” While race wasn’t mentioned, most museum docents are white, even as institutions increasingly want their volunteers to reflect the communities they serve. Nationally, more than 75 percent of museum docents are still white, retired women, but many museums have sought to diversify those ranks.

In 2021, the Art Institute of Chicago dismissed its entire docent corps, aiming to replace them with paid guides more representative of the tour groups they lead. According to a board statement, the goal was to allow “community members of all income levels to participate, respond to issues of class and income equity and not require financial flexibility to participate.”

Robin Schnur, executive director of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Learning Center at the Art Institute, told Observer that the museum seeks volunteers “who represent the communities that we serve.” Because student groups visit frequently, “first and foremost, volunteers have to want to work with children and the public.” Prior experience with young people is ideal, but not required. Flexibility and adaptability are crucial, as is the ability to work as part of a team. Of the museum’s 130 volunteers, 30 percent are bilingual or multilingual, which is valuable for connecting with non-English-speaking visitors.

Older white volunteers guiding minority school groups can create uncomfortable optics. Some institutions—including the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis—have discontinued docent programs entirely. Others, such as the Oakland Museum of California, have made similar moves. “Some of our older volunteers were disappointed,” Lori Fogarty, director and CEO of the Oakland Museum, told Observer. “It’s still a challenge to find younger volunteers to work with school children.”

The Mississippi Museum of Art still maintains a volunteer program, although its only current opening is for a floral arranger. Its online application includes a voluntary question asking applicants to select one of eight ethnicity options, with two additional boxes for “Other” and “I’d rather not say.” Meanwhile, some major museums—including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and New York’s Museum of Modern Art—paused their volunteer programs during the pandemic and have yet to resume them, possibly signaling a desire to rethink the model without having settled on a replacement.

Other institutions, like the MFA in Boston, have taken a gradual approach. “Newer volunteers, those recruited post-pandemic, are more diverse in age, gender and race,” the spokesperson said. “We do want to diversify our volunteer community to better reflect the visitor population. That effort began prior to the pandemic, and we continue to make strides.”

These efforts haven’t been universally embraced. Some long-serving volunteers have felt displaced by efforts to recruit more BIPOC guides. Yet even as museums prioritize inclusion, they’re also struggling to fill both paid and unpaid roles. A 2023 survey by the American Alliance of Museums found that 60 percent of institutions reported difficulty filling paid jobs, while 31 percent struggled to fill volunteer roles. Some of the vacancies stem from volunteers who stepped away during the pandemic and have been slow to return. “We’re in a time right now when a lot of federal funding has been rescinded or repurposed,” Chris Morehead, president of the American Association of Museum Volunteers, told Observer. “Institutions have had to find ways to manage their operations, and volunteers are needed now more than ever.”

He added that it’s unethical to ask unpaid workers to do jobs that were once compensated. Volunteer work is, by its nature, unpaid, though it can come with perks. Many institutions offer discounts of 10-20 percent at museum shops and cafes, free admission (often with a guest), invitations to previews and members-only events and discounted parking. MFA volunteers get free admission to other Boston-area cultural institutions, while the Brooklyn Museum offers access to museums across New York City and the U.S. The Smithsonian tops that by offering free or discounted entry to select museums worldwide. Volunteers can also deduct work-related expenses on their taxes, including mileage, tolls, parking and public transportation, though it’s likely most volunteers are less motivated by the small perks and more motivated by the opportunity to share their passions with others.

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The very first auction that Christie’s conducted, back in London in 1766, was a single-owner collection sale of objects only identified as “the property of a Noble Personage (Deceas’d).” Presumably, this person’s noble rank was seen as testimony enough for the quality and taste of the items he had acquired over his lifetime. (If it’s good ‘nough for the guv’nor, it’s good ‘nough for me.) The auction was what now would be called a “house sale,” and in case you are wondering, the sale took place over the course of five days. Almost 500 lots were offered, ranging from household furniture to jewels and firearms, as well as “a large Quantity of Madeira and high flavour’d Claret.”

Much has changed in the world since 1766, but to a certain degree, quite a lot has stayed the same. Auction houses regularly—perhaps even increasingly—offer objects of all types that are identified as coming from some notable individual’s or family’s collection, sometimes naming the seller, sometimes not, but just the fact that said person owned often raises the estimated price and likelihood of being sold.

A single-owner sale “totally elevates prices. It gives them a real boost,” Lisa Dennison, chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, told Observer, noting that a quarter of all Sotheby’s auctions in 2024 in all categories were single-owner sales. “These kinds of sales create promotional opportunities, so heirs and curators can be brought in to speak on the collection,” as well as what motivated the owner to collect these objects in the first place and how they represent a cohesive vision. “New collectors aspire to do as these older collectors have done, so the story of what a collector has done captures their imagination.”

No one has been tracking the number of single-owner auctions, but many auctioneers contacted suggested that the number of these “dedicated” sales has been on the rise in part because of how much more profitable they are than many of their regular sales. The auction houses Bonhams and Christie’s both have established departments focusing on single-owner sales. Anna Hicks, who oversees single-owner collections at Bonhams, told Observer that “there has been an increase in the number of single-owner sales in recent years, most notably because of the compelling narrative that a cohesive collection presents, which effectively engages and resonates with audiences and buyers.”

Jay Frederick Krehbiel, executive chairman of the Chicago-based Freeman’s | Hindman, agreed that “the number of single-owner sales has increased in the last few years. Technology has made it easier to tell these stories, and the data tells us that when material is brought to market in a thoughtful single-owner format, and when we have the right to use the name of the consignor publicly, buyers respond and push up prices. As such, if the material warrants single-owner treatment, we almost always recommend it.”

Krehbiel put this concept to the test in 2023 when he arranged for a two-part sale of the decorative arts collection of his own parents, Fred and Kay Krehbiel, which resulted in 97 percent of all lots being sold. He noted that “my brother and I don’t have all of my parents’ particular tastes,” leading them to put the English furniture, porcelain, silver, works of art and other finery in a single-owner sale. This type of sale is apt to be the last time all these objects will be together. Collectors can, and often do, donate objects to museums, but institutions tend to pick and choose among items, almost never taking everything, leaving the collectors themselves or their heirs to dispose of objects as best they can. A single-owner sale creates another opportunity for clearing out unwanted pieces and is a way of honoring a collector.

According to the 2024 UBS Art Market Report, one survey of high net-worth individuals found that of those who had “inherited works but no longer held them in their collections,” some of the main motivations for selling were practical: 55 percent said they sold or donated works as they did not have enough space to keep them, while another common reason was that there were estate taxes to settle (47 percent). We are in what economists have called the Great Wealth Transfer of assets from people of the aging and dying Baby Boom generation to their children and grandchildren, and the question of what to do with all this stuff and how to arrange sales in order to maximize value has become a prevalent concern.

Some of the most prominent sales this year have been single-owner auctions, including Christie’s May 12 sale of thirty-eight works owned by Leonard and Louise Riggio, including paintings by Balthus, Arshile Gorky, Rene Magritte, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, which earned $271,943,100, and Sotheby’s May 21 sale of fifty Old Masters artworks from the collection of Jordan and Thomas Saunders III that earned $64.7 million.

“We have had great success when items are owned by well-known people,” Elizabeth Siegel, vice president and head of private and iconic collections at Christie’s, told Observer. “A well-known individual definitely drives interest. If the same objects belonged to you and me, they wouldn’t produce the same level of prices.”

The sale of a significant collection does more than just give a title to a particular auction. There is now a story to be told, imbuing the objects with a secondary value. It’s not just the piece itself or the artist who made the thing; it is all that, plus the collector who had his or her own aesthetic vision, assembling all these objects together. Anna Hicks claimed that the company holds single-owner sales “as often as we can,” noting that “the strength of the narrative—whether centered on the collector or the collection—can justify and enhance the appeal of a dedicated sale.” A compelling narrative, she said, often results in higher prices at auction.

Nigel Freeman, head of fine art and in charge of African-American art sales at Swann Galleries in New York City, told Observer that the auction this past February of eighty-two lots from the collection of Patricia Scipio-Brim (1947-2023) created the opportunity to tell the story about her, “a Black woman collector, a lawyer, who has been a client of Swann’s since 2007. This sale could be seen as passing the baton from one generation to the next. People appreciated the story of this woman who was such a strong supporter of modern and contemporary African-American artists, and knowing that about her raised interest among other collectors who came to the sale and increased the level of bidding and the prices.”

Many of the artists in this sale are well known and have extensive auction price histories—Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Kara Walker, Beauford Delaney, Faith Ringgold, Richard Mayhew and Edward Bannister among them—but others had never had their works sold on the secondary market before, such as Terrie Boddie (b. 1965) and Elizabeth Colomba (b. 1976). Colomba’s painting Circe had a presale estimate of $2,000-3,000 and fetched $25,000 (with buyer’s premium). “Being part of this collection certainly elevated their standing” among buyers, Freeman said.

Single-owner auctions also offer prospective bidders some confidence about the objects up for sale. These lots have been evaluated and sold previously, indicating that others have done a degree of due diligence to ensure that they are properly attributed, not fakes or forgeries, and that their provenance—history of ownership—is adequately tracked. Because these items have been in a collection for some period of time, perhaps decades, they will be fresh to the market, which may appeal to buyers who are less interested in artworks that pop up at auction every few years.

Single-owner auctions may not be for every consignor. There may be too much of one type of object, which leads to auctioneers choosing to put pieces into different sales. “Most collectors don’t have enough works to fill an entire sale,” said Sandra Germain, owner of Shannon’s auction house in Milford, Connecticut, and others “don’t want to strip everything off their walls all at once” just to have enough items to fill a sale. “Some people just want to downsize.”

Yet others are reluctant to reveal their identities with a single-owner sale, not wanting to call attention to themselves or their wealth, especially if the auction proves to be very successful. It is not uncommon for auction catalogues in general sales to list a group of lots as being “from an important collection.” (Dennison said that “we have about nineteen different ways of saying this, from ‘Property of a Lady,’ ‘Property of an East Coast Collector,’ ‘Property of a West Coast Collector,’” and so on.) This designation doesn’t tell prospective bidders much of anything other than the fact that matters of provenance and attribution are likely settled. Last October, Christie’s held a sale of sixty-two American paintings only identified as from “An Important Private Collection,” which resulted in sales of $2,524,284.

Yet others are reluctant to reveal their identities with a single-owner sale, not wanting to call attention to themselves or their wealth, especially if the auction proves to be very successful. It is not uncommon for auction catalogues in general sales to list a group of lots as being “from an important collection.” (Dennison said that “we have about nineteen different ways of saying this, from ‘Property of a Lady,’ ‘Property of an East Coast Collector,’ ‘Property of a West Coast Collector,’” and so on.) This designation doesn’t tell prospective bidders much of anything other than the fact that matters of provenance and attribution are likely settled. Last October, Christie’s held a sale of sixty-two American paintings only identified as from “An Important Private Collection,” which resulted in sales of $2,524,284.

Auction houses are loath to publicly identify those anonymous consignors because, Germain said, “it will alert other auctioneers and dealers who will contact that person to find out what else they have.”

Some consignors simply aren’t interested in playing up their family names and ask that a group of objects that they are bringing to auction not be identified with themselves or with their families, but Dennison said that “I try to convince them that they do want this. Legacy is important and improves the financial outcome. They tell me, ‘My family name doesn’t mean anything to people,’ and I tell them that we can change that. We can create market momentum.”

On the other hand, auction house officials may decline the opportunity to have a named sale when the collector’s identity might be detrimental—for instance, if that person is known for being politically right-wing or left-wing or was indicted for or convicted of some crime. (Christie’s, for example, canceled the second edition of the World of Heidi Horten jewelry sale after backlash surrounding the fact that her husband, Helmut Horten, was a member of the Nazi party known to have forcefully purchased companies from Jewish business owners in the 1930s.)

Some collectors are renowned for what they have acquired, drawing prospective bidders to auctions of their objects. In May, a group of twelve artworks—including pieces by Elizabeth Peyton, On Kawara, Richard Prince and Thomas Schutte—from the collection of Manhattan art gallery owner Barbara Gladstone, who died last year at the age of 89, sold for $18.8 million, exceeding the presale estimate. Thomas Mittler was a world-renowned collector of scrimshaw, and the four-part sale of his collection in 2016 and 2017 at Eldred’s auction house in Cape Cod, brought out buyers and record prices, most notably for five carved whale teeth that sold for more than $100,000 apiece (one for $456,000). “In the scrimshaw community, Thomas Mittler was at the top,” Joshua Eldred, president and chief executive officer of the auction house, told Observer.

Celebrity names also inspire buyers to whip out their checkbooks. Often, these notables have died, such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (her odds and ends generated sales of $34,457,470, well above the original estimate of $4.6 million, over four days at Sotheby’s in 1996) and Elizabeth Taylor (her collection of jewelry sold at Christie’s in 2011 for $115,932,000). Elton John is still alive but wanted to pare down his estate with a sale of art, his Bentley, a pair of prescription sunglasses and other ephemera that fetched $7,960,900 last year at Christie’s. Fame is a powerful thing.

Sometimes, the desire to own something previously owned by some VIP leads to irrationally exuberant spending, such as the $40,960 one buyer spent to buy musician Tom Petty’s personal desk, which had been estimated to sell for $300-500 when it went on the block at Bonhams in 2022. Perhaps the fact that Petty’s initials and those of his wife were engraved on the desk explains it? “Admirers of public figures often place significant value on items associated with the individual, driven by a desire to own a tangible connection to someone they admire,” Hicks said. “As a result, such items frequently command a premium—well beyond what similar pieces might achieve without the celebrity association.”

Irrationality sometimes afflicts the most rational among us. “Even I bought two pieces of costume jewelry from the Jackie Onassis sale,” New York art lawyer Ralph Lerner told Observer. “It was for my daughters. They might have cost Jackie Onassis $20, but my daughters at least could say that they had something once owned by Jackie O.”

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Like a lot of people, Thomas Unger is pretty particular about his coffee. How it tastes is important, but the Houston artist’s principal interest is how it works as a painting medium. “I use brewed coffee sometimes, but mostly instant coffee,” he told Observer, mixing it with water until it reaches the right consistency for him to paint with. Darker grounds produce deeper and glossier browns, while a somewhat more watery slurry generates tans. Then, he starts painting on either thick watercolor paper or canvas that has been primed with motor oil. Again, he is pretty particular about the oil, preferring Pennzoil. “I use a mixture of used oil—carbon deposits make it darker, new oil and graphite powder,” he said. Unger doesn’t go into why an artist might use coffee grounds and motor oil when watercolor paints and commercial primers already do the job satisfactorily, but perhaps the fact that his artistic sideline—he’s a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard—is called “CarsinCoffee” is reason enough.

He is part of a small but notable group of artists who create works using nontraditional materials or use traditional mediums in nontraditional ways. Creatively stepping away from tried-and-true materials and techniques can result in unique output but may also create what art conservators call “inherent vices”—a flaw or defect that will cause an artwork to deteriorate. Unger asserted that his painting surfaces are stable and do not smell of oil, although some have a “pleasant” coffee aroma.

Sometimes unconventional mediums just work. Artist Kiki Smith told Observer she “once had blood removed from my veins with a syringe and made drawings with it. I don’t think there have been any conservation issues.” That’s not always the case, however, and art conservators face challenges of all types. Ellen Moody, conservator of contemporary art at the Getty Conservation Institute in California, told Observer that she has worked on pieces made from chocolate (Dieter Roth), hair gel (Anicka Yi), milk and ketchup (Pope.L), epoxy and dried corn (Fernando Mastrangelo) and even a living beehive (Pierre Huyghe).

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Jackson Pollock used paint on canvas, but he used industrial paints such as house paint and automotive lacquers rather than more traditional artists’ paints. “These paints were never designed for flexible supports and can become brittle and flake over time,” Moody explained. Her first job, after determining what she is dealing with, is to “stabilize the surface by introducing a suitable adhesive beneath partially detached areas, often using a syringe, then gently re-adhering and securing the flakes. We then tone the losses with materials that are stable, reversible and distinguishable under examination methods such as U.V. light.”

It’s not all bad news. She added that “many artworks using unconventional materials have aged surprisingly well. David Hammons’ 1970s works incorporating grease, hair and chicken bones are a great example—they remain in good condition, likely due to careful construction and stable environments.”

But not every experimental artist is as fortunate. In the late 1970s, Andy Warhol created a series of what he called “Oxidation Paintings” that involved studio assistants urinating and ejaculating on canvases prepared with copper-based metallic paints, which caused a chemical reaction resulting in abstract images of different colors. Urine, which is somewhat acidic, contributed to the oxidation and patina but did not eat through the canvas. “From my experience, if kept in the right environment, they are quite stable, but any high humidity can cause irreversible changes,” Suzanne Siano, a conservator in New York City, told Observer, adding that “the dried pee liquifies and runs down the work.” Urine also smells, but in the intervening years any odor has largely gone away. “A few piss paintings that were left after Warhol died that the foundation had me treat did smell of pee because they were stored in a drawer for many years, but I suspect that the smell has dissipated now that they are out in the air.”

While the “piss paintings” (as they are often called) are in several major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Tate in London and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, those that used semen as a material (the “cum paintings”) are all stored at the Warhol Museum and generally are not on view.

More recently, artist Dan Colen has produced numerous paintings that use, instead of paint, flowers, Hubba Bubba bubble gum, bird poop, tar and feathers. Siano, who has worked on many of Colen’s artworks, told Observer that one of the first issues she dealt with was building stronger stretchers since the material on these canvases was far too heavy for the supports to hold. The chewing gum created separate problems, as pieces began oozing color and just falling off. The long-term prospects for these paintings were not part of his thinking, and Colen side-stepped the conservation issues of his work, noting that “my paintings are about the things they are made of.”

In 1991, British artist Damien Hirst acquired a preserved tiger shark that he submerged in a glass tank of water and formaldehyde, titling it The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. The level of formaldehyde in the tank was not sufficient, and within a dozen years, the shark began to deteriorate and the water became murky, requiring the artist to replace the shark with another and to submerge it in a solution with a higher formaldehyde content. (As to whether it’s still the same artwork, Hirst called the question “a big dilemma.”)

Sometimes, artists just have to throw up their hands and consign an artwork to the trash bin. Painter Tom Christopher once used “roofing tar on a piece as a background. It eventually hardened, and chunks fell off.” He let the buyer pick a work from his inventory as a replacement. Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum had to do the same when an unconventional medium from one of his paintings detached from the canvas.

A redo is rare in the art field, however. More often, artists do the best they can. British artist Chris Ofili applied some concoction to the elephant dung pedestals used to hold up some of his paintings to eliminate the smell, but still, those “pedestals were breaking apart and needed to be stabilized,” Kelly O’Neill, an art conservator in New York City, told Observer. But it’s impossible to control everything. The doors of the gallery in which the paintings were displayed were regularly opened and closed, which altered the levels of heat and humidity, affecting the dung’s chemical composition.

Artworks don’t hold up well for a variety of reasons, and not just because the artists were experimenting with materials. Timothy Burica, an art conservator in Manhattan, told Observer that he worked on the canvases of the Spanish-born abstract expressionist Esteban Vicente, who had a studio at 42nd Street and 10th Avenue. In that studio, “the windows were wide open, and the New York City Port Authority buses were going back and forth outside,” he said. He described Vicente as “a wonderful kind man, but all his canvases were coated with grime and soot.” That soot got between paint layers on his canvases, causing what is called delamination (separating layers). Burica did what he could to remove the soot and help bond those layers.

He additionally said that some artists have mixed oil and acrylic paints (oil and water do not mix) or mixed different paint manufacturers’ products (“they look the same, but they have different ingredients and different drying times”) or applied paint to improperly primed canvases or loaded up their paints with additional oil (affecting drying time) or items like sand and grit (which becomes too heavy for the canvas to hold). “Vincent van Gogh was sent properly prepared canvases by his brother, who was rich,” Burica said, “while Gauguin, who was poor, painted on sacks. You can guess which artist’s work had more conservation issues.”

Art conservation is always a slow and painstaking process, and it can be quite expensive for the owner or possessor of the art. Gwen Manthey, a private art conservator in Washington, D.C., has all her clients sign a contract noting that “the cost for treatment may exceed the market value of the artwork(s).” In generations past, art schools taught students about the materials they were using and the techniques that led to longevity, but that has largely been replaced by a focus on artistic expression and theory—developing ideas that will be realized in an object to be called Art. “Artists have gotten really wacko,” Paul Himmelstein, a partner in the New York City-based art conservation lab Appelbaum & Himmelstein, summarized. “Anything goes.”

That said, obtaining reliable information for the proper use of traditional art materials is not difficult. The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia includes a page on its website for artists with information and advice about materials. Art supply manufacturers provide best practices and health and safety information on their websites—Golden Artist Colors in New Berlin, New York, for one, has a page of safety tips and a contact link specifically for technical questions about products. Other companies do the same. In other words, if artists create artworks that are unstable, it’s usually a choice rather than an accident.

Conservators who are sent artworks with inherent vices may find themselves with a science project on their hands. First step: figure out what types of materials the artists used and how they put it together. Siano recalled that once, when attempting to find a fix for Dan Colen’s gum paintings, she had her staff chew gum, which she then tried baking and microwaving to see if that would stop the ooze.

“Sometimes we are lucky enough as conservators to be able to contact living artists and find more information or even to find written accounts of their materials and processes,” Alexa Beller, paintings conservator at the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis, told Observer. “Oftentimes, though, we are unable to access that information and, in those instances, we try not to rely on our own biases or assumptions but rather evaluate the materials and aesthetics in a way that best preserves what remains and what intended aesthetic we can deduce.” She doesn’t fix problems as much as stabilize things, providing work for the next generation’s conservators.

There is no “lemon law” for artworks as there is for automobiles, and the onus is on each collector to find out if an artist has a propensity for creating works that don’t hold up well. Art dealers generally do not know or are reluctant to mention that artworks they are selling are likely to have future conservation issues. “Dealers just want to get things sold, get them out the door, and they’re not going to breathe a word about problems,” Himmelstein said. Theoretically, artworks with inherent vices should affect the reputations of the artists who produced them and their prices, but Warhol and Colen’s standings in the art field certainly haven’t been diminished.

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From all the professional codes of ethics that exist in the numerous associations of people involved in the arts, one might guess that the art sphere is a well-policed realm of integrity. And perhaps it is, the periodic reports of some art advisor or dealer or appraiser admitting to some crime notwithstanding. Last fall, art advisor Lisa Schiff pleaded guilty in federal court for stealing $6.5 million from clients, while Nevada art appraiser Michael Jon Schofield admitted in court that he had inflated the value of several artworks as part of an insurance fraud. Currently, South Florida art dealer Leslie Roberts faces charges of selling fake Andy Warhols (and another was convicted of the same crime two years earlier). And New York dealer Inigo Philbrick sits in prison for stealing $86 million from clients, while the once reigning “Queen of the Art Scene” Mary Boone must occupy herself in some way after closing her two New York art galleries following her conviction for tax evasion back in 2019.

To be fair, Lisa Schiff was never a member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors, nor was Inigo Philbrick part of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). Mary Boone, however, was a member of ADAA, as were Larry Salander (who pleaded guilty in 2010 to stealing more than $100 million from clients and investors) and Knoedler & Co. (which closed in 2012 after a series of lawsuits from clients claimed that forty multi-million-dollar abstract expressionist paintings they had purchased from the gallery were all forgeries). Boone, Salander and Knoedler had all been members in good standing of the dealers association, which promptly threw them out after the two gallery owners pleaded guilty and the Knoedler gallery was shuttered.

So, can we applaud the art advisors association for not including Lisa Schiff and the dealers association for not having Inigo Philbrick as a member, or was it just dumb luck? And did the criminal activities of Boone, Salander and Knoedler really come as a surprise to other members of the ADAA?

Membership in certain associations does confer status—presumably there are requirements for membership, including being experienced, knowledgeable and ethical. Linda Selvin, executive director of the Appraisers Association of America, told Observer that the organization’s lawyers regularly send cease-and-desist letters to appraisers who “misidentify themselves as being members when they are not. It is prestigious to be a member.”

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She noted that the association has “an intense application process,” involving 120 hours of online coursework and reviews of sample appraisals, as well as professional references and a paper trail that shows one has worked in the field for at least five years.

The association does have a code of ethics and an ethics committee, which only meets when a complaint has been lodged against a member, usually by a dissatisfied client. (The group takes action when the complaint comes to the association in writing.) On occasion, the committee sides with its own member, finding that the appraiser did an adequate job, but the client was just unhappy with the stated valuation. Other times, the member will be directed to retake one or more of the online courses—“we prefer to help our members who are trying to do a good job,” Selvin said, although one member who was convicted of felony charges “left on his own.”

Many art galleries in New York and elsewhere place an emblem at the front desk of their shops, announcing that they are members of an association, there to assure would-be clients that the dealer here is a straight-shooter vetted in some way by said association. Making that last quality clear, the Art Dealers Association of America has a lengthy code of ethical conduct on its website: Dealers should be certain that what they are selling is authentic and hasn’t been stolen, that they are aware of any defects in the artwork, informing clients of what they know on a written sales receipt. Ethical treatment of artists and consignors is also stipulated.

Meanwhile, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers’ website states that “AIPAD Members have agreed to a Code of Ethics: Members agree to conduct dealings with the public, museums, artists and other dealers with honesty and integrity.” Members of the Fort Worth Art Dealers Association, it is claimed on its website, “are pledged to the maintenance of a high standard of ethical conduct and professional integrity,” while the San Francisco Art Dealers Association “seeks to promote the highest standards of connoisseurship, scholarship and ethical practice within the gallery community.” The Belgian-based international art and antiques dealer association Confédération Internationale des Négociants en Œuvres d’Art (CINOA) has its own stated ethical standards calling for “high levels of ethical behaviour.” The Association of Art Museum Directors and the Association of Art Museum Curators both have codes governing the behavior of their members.

But among the numerous art dealer and gallery associations around the country—including those in Bismarck (North Dakota), Boston, Charleston, Denver, Fort Worth, Houston, Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, Santa Fe, Scottsdale and Seattle—written codes of ethical conduct aren’t particularly common. That isn’t a license for bad behavior on the part of the member galleries, just a result of the fact that these associations don’t exist to police their members but to coordinate their marketing efforts. The Scottsdale Gallery Association, in partnership with the City of Scottsdale, for instance, organizes the “Scottsdale Art District Art Walk” each Thursday evening and the special event Gold Palette Art Walks numerous times throughout the tourism season. The Seattle Art Dealers Association was formed 35 years ago to “support the gallery guide that we have been publishing” to let visitors know about where galleries are located and what they are exhibiting, Greg Kucera, a gallery owner in Seattle and a founding member of the association, told Observer. “The publication has become more important than the association itself.”

The Seattle Art Dealers Association does not have a code of ethical conduct, although the organization’s website notes that it “was created in May of 1990 to uphold high ethical standards among its members and to promote cultural and educational activities.” How those standards are upheld is not clear since, as Kucera said, “we don’t have a protocol for dealing with problems.” One area dealer, Kurt Lidtke, who Kucera was quick to acknowledge “was not a member,” was sent to federal prison in 2011 for four years for conspiring with a professional burglar to steal art from his former clients.

When news broke of what Lidtke had been doing, “many of us thought, ‘Oh, that explains a lot.’” Dealers may hear things or suspect things but be reluctant to speak or act openly. “People may be intimidated bringing up problems,” Kucera added.

Having a written or unwritten code of ethical conduct is meaningless if organizations are reluctant to discipline wayward members. For instance, the owner of Harcourts Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery in San Francisco declared bankruptcy and fled the country as a result of improper business practices, yet “none of us had any inkling of the problems,” John Pence, then president of the San Francisco Art Dealers Association, told Observer. “We don’t know the inner workings of each other’s businesses.” Similarly, the Middendorf Gallery in Washington, D.C., resigned its membership in the Washington Art Dealers Association in the midst of civil lawsuits over its financial dealings with collectors and other dealers but was never called to account by the association. “We hadn’t been aware of what was going on before the suits were filed,” Christopher Addison, the association’s past president, said.

As in the case of Lawrence Salander and Knoedler Gallery, good people can go bad, requiring even long-time clients of a gallery to keep tabs on the dealers with whom they have relationships. Kim Maier, executive director of the Association of Professional Art Advisors, which published its code of ethical conduct on its website, told Observer that the code “serves members and their clients by establishing clear professional standards that promote transparency and best practices in art advising. Upon invitation by APAA’s board of directors and acceptance into the organization, all members agree to the code of ethics, reaffirming their commitment annually when their membership is renewed.”

That is perhaps more of an honor code than one the association can actively enforce, but Maier added that “in the extremely rare cases when we have become aware that a member’s activities do not align with our standards, we have asked that person to resign.”

Erika Bochereau, secretary general of CINOA, told Observer that “concerns regarding potential ethical breaches can arise through a variety of channels, such as formal complaints from clients, media reports, legal actions or discreet communications from professionals within the trade,” and disciplinary actions have resulted. “Outcomes have ranged from formal warnings and mandated corrective measures to, in more serious cases, suspension or expulsion from the member organization.” In many instances, the violations were not so much of willful wrongdoing as just poor business practices, with the organization mandating “corrective measures,” such as “repairing damaged goods, providing additional documentation or research to clarify an item’s provenance or authenticity, issuing a refund, or improving transparency in business practices.”

What this boils down to is that clients of art galleries and art advisors have to look out for themselves, known in legal parlance as doing one’s due diligence. Henry and Anne Marie Frigon of Scottsdale, Arizona, began a positive relationship with Richard H. Love, owner of R.H. Love Galleries in Chicago, starting in the early 1990s, learning about art from him and buying eleven works of American Impressionist paintings from his gallery. Between 1997 and 2002, the Frigons decided to sell these works, consigning them periodically to R.H. Love Galleries. The gallery sold them for less than the agreed-upon prices, and the dealer kept the difference between the actual sales price and the amounts told to the Frigons. In a lawsuit by the Frigons, an Illinois district court judge found in favor of the collectors, concluding that “no reasonable person could foresee the Gallery converting the paintings for its own profit.” Lucky for them, though it strains credulity—during the period when the Frigons were selling their paintings through Love, the gallery was being sued by other people for that very grift.

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When you think of the U.S. State Department, what comes to mind? Diplomats delivering messages to foreign governments to stave off war or resolve disputes? Public servants and contractors? Or a glorified passport office? Yet another way to think about the State Department building in Washington, D.C.’s northwest district is as a museum. Its collection includes over 5,000 objects—paintings, portraits, a bust of Benjamin Franklin, a Chippendale chair, a silver water pitcher and significant historic desks and tables. Some of it is recent, but much of it dates back to the early years of the Republic.

The Treasury Department probably doesn’t inspire warm feelings. It houses the Internal Revenue Service and regulates the sale of alcohol, firearms and tobacco, so there’s something for everyone to resent. But unbeknownst to most, it also has an extensive art collection that includes portraits of Abraham Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary, views of the Treasury Building and sixty-one paintings and prints created by artists commissioned under the Depression-era Works Progress Administration between 1933 and 1943. In all, there are between 5,000 and 7,000 objects in this collection.

Both agencies employ curators to care for these collections and stage the objects in ways that help visitors appreciate their significance. Yet also unbeknownst to many is the fact that the public can tour the rooms in which these cultural objects are displayed, free of charge. No background checks, no Real IDs. At the Treasury Department, however, tours are guided and offered only on Saturday mornings at 9:00, 9:45, 10:30 and 11:15.

SEE ALSO: Observer’s Guide to Fine Art Storage, Where Masterpieces Go to Wait

There is certainly no shortage of museums in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian Institution is an agglomeration of seventeen museums, galleries and a zoo, much of it located on the Mall. They’re all free, and the only question for visitors is which to visit on any given day—the American Art Museum? The African Art Museum? The Hirshhorn? Or perhaps the Freer Gallery of Art? But what’s particularly striking about the fine and decorative objects housed in federal departments and agencies is the element of surprise. Most visitors expect art to be confined to museums. However, many federal collections amount to de facto exhibitions that are ongoing and evolving.

What’s in the United States’ art collections

At the Treasury Department, the collection tells the history of the department itself. The same goes for the Senate Office Building, with its portraits of Senate leaders, sculpted busts of numerous vice presidents and historic furniture; the House of Representatives, with portraits of speakers, sculptures from every state and assorted artifacts; the Supreme Court, with oil portraits, busts and photographs; the Federal Reserve, with paintings focused on currency and portraits of Fed chairmen; and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, which manages a vast array of sculptures, portraits and photographs of Congress.

Before 9/11, visitors to the Capitol building were allowed to wander more freely. Today, they begin at the Visitors Center and join guided tours. Still, “most people are overwhelmed by the majesty of the place,” Dr. Michele Cohen, curator of the Capitol’s collection, told Observer. The Rotunda—a large circular space at the building’s center—“is kind of a pilgrimage site for many people,” as they take in the murals depicting key moments in U.S. history and, at the top of the dome, Constantino Brumidi’s 1865 painting The Apotheosis of George Washington.

Other collections can be found at Blair House (paintings and antique household furnishings), in the holdings of the five branches of the U.S. military (combat art) and the White House (fine and decorative arts spanning furniture, portraits and historic objects). The White House collection actually totals 40,000 items, though most of it—china, flatware, glassware—is reserved for official use by dignitaries and guests. NASA’s art collection includes over 3,000 pieces, including sketches and paintings; some are on display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, but others are in NASA headquarters.

Much of the General Services Administration’s art collection—24,000 paintings, prints and sculptures commissioned since the 1850s—is installed in federal buildings across the country. The GSA’s collecting strategy is less about institutional history than a record of American art over the past 150 years. The Department of the Interior has the largest collection of cultural artifacts of all, spread across its bureaus, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs (over 5.5 million items), the National Parks Service (120 million items), the Fish and Wildlife Service (5.5 million items) and the U.S. Geological Survey (over 40,000 items). If you’re only interested in art, the DOI has more than 101,000 pieces of fine art representing hundreds of years of history.

Each federal collection of art and artifacts reflects the character of its institution. At the House of Representatives, you’ll find a baseball card for Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, a former MLB pitcher who served three terms as a Congressman from North Carolina. Another highlight is an 1857 desk from the House’s chambers at a time when members had no offices or staff and stored everything in a single lift-top desk. The contrast with today’s expansive offices is telling.

The Senate’s collection is similarly varied, ranging from a Thomas Sully portrait of Thomas Jefferson and a Gilbert Stuart of George Washington to items bordering on kitsch, like impeachment trial tickets and Senate doodles. There’s also china and silverware used at Barack Obama’s presidential luncheon. With around 10,000 items, some are displayed in lobbies and meeting rooms, while others are in storage. Together, they form a kind of institutional memory, even when the items aren’t strictly Senate-related.

But not every collection is narrative in purpose. The State Department’s diplomatic reception rooms on the eighth floor—home to a Paul Revere silver punch bowl, a desk used by Thomas Jefferson, Affleck and Chippendale chairs, tea sets and paintings by John Singleton Copley, Jean Baptiste Greuze, Fitz Hugh Lane, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart and others—recreate the aesthetic of America from 1740 to 1830. At Blair House, the presidential guest house across from the White House, the furnishings and art skew toward the mid- to late-19th Century and early 20th Century. (Though not a museum, Blair House still functions as a guest house for dignitaries and officials.)

How federal agencies build art collections

Interestingly, federal collections tend not to be insured or valued because they rarely travel, and if they do, it’s to another government agency. One exception is the State Department, whose collection has been appraised at $100 million.

Maintaining all of this costs money, and the sources vary. The Senate and House fund their own collections, while agencies rely on private donations. The State Department raises funds for the diplomatic reception rooms through its Office of Fine Arts (it also has an Art in Embassies office that curates around sixty exhibitions each year and builds art collections for the country’s diplomatic spaces). At Blair House, the federal government pays for building upkeep, while the Blair House Restoration Fund covers conservation. The nonprofit Supreme Court Historical Society raises about $35,000 annually for acquisitions and portrait commissions. The Treasury Historical Association helps preserve the Treasury Building and expand the collection. The Federal Reserve’s Fine Arts Trust Fund accepts donations of both money and artworks. The United States Capitol Historical Society supports the work of the Capitol’s curator and architect. And the White House Historical Association, founded by Jacqueline Kennedy in the early 1960s, raises millions each year through sales of ornaments, guidebooks and poster reproductions.

It’s not terribly different from how major cultural institutions handle acquisitions and preservation, just writ smaller. What really distinguishes collecting and curating for a federal agency from curating for a museum is that works not in storage are displayed in active buildings: staff, visitors and guests use the rugs, sit in the chairs, write at the desks, sleep in the four-poster beds and sometimes break or otherwise ruin things—by spilling coffee or leaning back too far. Most objects aren’t behind ropes or under glass. At Blair House, the largest share of the annual budget goes to conservation, which there means repairing and returning items to use. History has work to do.

At the White House—which houses what might be the most scrutinized collection of all—that work includes projecting a polished national image. The walls feature portraits of presidents and first ladies, and paintings by Albert Bierstadt, George Caleb Bingham, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Jasper Cropsey, Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, John Marin, Willard Metcalf, Thomas Moran, Maurice Prendergast, Norman Rockwell, Severin Roesen, John Singer Sargent and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Why does someone visit a museum? Perhaps it’s to see the permanent displays of works from the collection or the special exhibitions. My best friend’s boyfriend said his book group went to the art museum after seeing the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring. Then again, maybe it’s just because the lunch menu sounds so good.

“In the past, museums were more academic. They were places to go see things,” Adrienne Horn, president of San Francisco-based Museum Management Consultants, told Observer. “Increasingly, they are becoming gathering centers, where there are a lot of things to do.” The aim of today’s evolving art museum—and more accurately, its shifting business model—is to embed the institution into the fabric of everyday life, “creating value in the community” and, through this, generating more revenue.

Food is a significant part of this strategy, and major metropolitan art museums are bringing award-winning chefs aboard as a way to draw attention to their cafés and upscale in-house restaurants. Museum dining spots are increasingly written up in Michelin and Zagat guides, reviewed in magazines such as Bon Appétit, Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure, and promoted by the institutions themselves. The Museum of Modern Art’s restaurant The Modern—one of six options on-site for a snack, drink or full meal—is extolled by Michelin as capturing “the iconic feel of the MoMA in which it is housed,” adding that “the staff perform a veritable ballet as they present diners with such appealingly nuanced dishes as a seed cracker with aged cheddar and butternut squash butter; or eggs on eggs, starring none other than soft-boiled eggs with sturgeon caviar. Turbot roasted on the bone may then arrive alongside rich parmesan cream.” Would that the art exhibitions were described in such lavish terms!

Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, was suitably impressed, saying that “getting a Michelin star rating was a goal for me”—a goal he and the museum achieved with their restaurant Le Jardinier. “Accomplished sauces, seasonal vegetables and thoughtful cocktails tell a story in line with the restaurant’s name and design,” according to Michelin.

Tinterow eats at the museum restaurant regularly, he said, but ensuring a good meal wasn’t the point. “The restaurant brings people to the museum who would not otherwise come—who might not even know that we exist.”

SEE ALSO: The Louvre and Other French Institutions Prepare to Raise Ticket Prices for Non-E.U. Visitors

Many of those people do just come for the food without visiting the museum, which is possible because Le Jardinier has a separate street entrance, allowing those with an appetite for food and not art to bypass the $24 adult admission. But the restaurant may be an entrée to the museum for some, leading diners to become visitors, members, spenders and donors. That’s important financially. The museum’s food service—which includes Le Jardinier, a more casual café (Café Leonelli) and catering for weddings and events—brings in $6 million annually, or nearly 7 percent of its $90 million budget.

Perhaps the clearest sign that museum cafés and restaurants are competing with each other and local dining scenes is the fact that menus are now featured on the institutions’ websites. Visitors browse not just for exhibitions and ticket prices but also for the catch of the day. This is further proof that the museum café doesn’t simply support the visitor experience—it’s often the reason for the visit.

Is this just follow-the-leader, or do museums know something about today’s art-going public? Most likely, it’s both. Food serves several purposes here. Dining options keep visitors inside a museum longer. They provide a social space, turning the museum into an amenity. A café or restaurant gives people a reason to become members, as it typically comes with a 10 percent discount at eateries and the museum shop. Quality food offerings can also entice people to host events at the museum.

At the Oakland Museum of California, food is one way the institution is competing with other attractions. The old basement cafeteria no longer cuts it, and so the museum opened Town Fare Café. “People have higher expectations about what they eat now than in the past. The bar has been rising,” museum director Lori Fogarty told Observer. “When I meet with colleagues, we all say that it’s unbelievable how much time we’re all thinking about the restaurant.”

At the Cleveland Museum of Art, the competition includes the nearby Museum of Natural History (whose restaurant, Exploration, touts “quality signature cuisine showcasing local, seasonal ingredients”), the Botanical Garden with its Garden Café and Case Western Reserve University. “We compete with them and with other restaurants in the area,” said Todd Mesek, chief marketing officer at the Museum of Art, which offers both the Provenance Restaurant and Provenance Café. “None of these other institutions have both a restaurant and a café,” he added, noting that Cleveland is becoming a foodie town. “We want visitors to stay, not to say ‘Oh, it’s lunchtime, where should I go to eat?’” He aims to win the battle of the stomach.

Food also shapes the museum’s public identity. Some institutions pair menus with exhibitions—French cuisine for Impressionist shows, Japanese for Yayoi Kusama. Most restaurants can’t match that kind of thematic flexibility. In 2018, the Brooklyn Museum mounted an exhibition called “David Bowie Is,” featuring costumes, lyric sheets, album art and video. The Norm, its restaurant, staged four nights of Bowie-themed food and drink. One night’s menu:

Diamond dogfish & chips

House-made tartar sauce, cabbage slaw

An homage to one of Chef Saul Bolton’s favorite Bowie albums, Diamond Dogs. Of course, it also references Bowie’s English origins and in England, for decades, fish ‘n’ chips has commonly been made with dogfish caught off the East Coast of the U.S. and exported to the U.K. So, yes, this dish is made with dogfish, which is growing in popularity here among those committed to sustainable fish sourcing. That practice has long been embraced by Great Performances, the premier New York City catering and retail hospitality concern that operates The Norm, as well as the Brooklyn Museum’s Café and is the exclusive caterer for events at the museum.

Croque monsieur

Gruyere, ham, béchamel sauce, greens

An oft-documented Bowie favorite, particularly the off-the-menu one made for him at a NYC restaurant where he was a regular. What distinguished it and The Norm’s rendition is the sauce actually being a Welsh rarebit sauce, incorporating beer and Worcestershire Sauce 

Curried hand pies

Potatoes, peas, raita sauce

Another Bowie favorite, savory hand pies. This one boasts an Indian accent as a nod to the large Indian population of Bowie’s birthplace, London. 

Shepherd’s pie

Ground beef, onions, Yukon gold mash

Yet another one of Bowie’s go-to dishes and a British comfort food staple. This is a rather classic version, although Bowie was known to enjoy creative variations on the traditional shepherd’s pie. 

Warm Bavarian pretzels

Spicy queso, mustard

Museums are upscaling their food because other institutions are doing the same, and everyone is chasing the same visitor, creating a kind of culinary arms race. “We are definitely in competition with area restaurants,” Michael Bodell, chief operating officer of Petersen Automotive Museum in L.A., told Observer. Its restaurant, the Meyer Manx Café, sees 20 to 30 percent of customers come just for the food, according to general manager Nico Harward.

Since 2024, “we’ve doubled down on our café,” said Brad Pritchett, chief experience officer at the Dallas Museum of Art. “We renovated the space, improved the menu, the chef, the experience.” Before that, only 5 percent of visitors came solely to eat. Now it’s 17 percent.

“I’ve traveled all over the world, visiting museums and their restaurants,” Tinterow said. “I wanted the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to offer a dining experience comparable to the best I’ve experienced, such as at the Rijksmuseum and the Modern.” Who needs art?

What is the afterlife of an artwork? After a piece’s creation, it emerges briefly into public view, and—if fortunate—is acquired and shown again elsewhere. But if the work is valuable enough, its fate is often more static: soon after its creation (in the case of contemporary art) or its sale (in the case of works by a deceased artist), a painting or sculpture may be sealed in a crate and consigned to long-term storage, disappearing from sight for years, if not decades. And so alongside the art market, the fine art storage industry has expanded significantly, with buyers, dealers and museums not only in the U.S. but around the world acquiring more and more objects that people and even institutions no longer have room for.

The length of time artworks remain in crates at storage facilities varies widely, “from a few weeks to decades,” Thomas Burns, chief operating officer at fine art storage company Fortress Storage, told Observer. The shorter-term leases tend to be for clients “who are in a period of transition in their lives; people move, die, get divorced,” and need a place to put things until life settles. Other art investors “hope that pieces increase in value in years to come” and will let them sit in crates until that time arrives. And some place artworks in freeports—custom-free storage sites in the U.S. and elsewhere that allow buyers to avoid sales and use taxes as well as tariffs.

The two largest players in the fine art storage industry are UOVO, which launched in 2014 with one 280,000-square-foot site in Long Island City and now operates thirty locations across the country totaling 1.5 million square feet, and Crozier, which has two million square feet of storage space across forty sites worldwide.

SEE ALSO: What Collectors Really Want from Galleries, According to Artsy’s Casey Lesser

They offer a solution for a world of too much, beginning with artists who increasingly work at a large scale to align with the demands of international art fairs, where bigger is de rigueur. These larger artworks require commercial galleries to maintain expansive showrooms for temporary exhibitions. After the show, “dealers have to store it, then they sell it to collectors who have to store it, then they donate it to museums that have to store it,” New York City art advisor Todd Levin told Observer.

Museums, foundations, gallery owners and private collectors are the primary clients of these facilities. Collectors make up the bulk of art storage clients, but museums provide the greatest volume of objects to store. And it’s worth noting that the need for storage is a broader cultural phenomenon, of which fine art storage is just one segment. There are currently more than 52,000 self-storage facilities across the U.S., with the rate of new openings rising sharply, from an average of 439 per year between 2010 and 2019 to 735 per year between 2010 and 2023. (The pandemic boosted the self-storage sector.) Americans spend more than $45 billion annually to rent storage lockers by the week, month or year.

Fine art storage facilities differ from your local storage locker in several ways—the first being that they only accept objects of long-term value. “We don’t allow other types of things, like mattresses,” Nir Eshed, head of operations at Mana Contemporary, told Observer. “They might come with bed bugs and roaches,” which could infest the entire facility. And at $30 to $60 per square foot—the rate Mana charges clients for storage units—it’s probably cheaper to just buy a new mattress anyway.

Cost is another differentiator. According to the Journal of Consumer Research, the average monthly cost of a standard commercial five-by-five-foot self-storage unit is $90. At Fortress Storage, the lowest-priced vault is sixteen square feet priced at $250 per month. At the higher end, Fortress charges up to $10,000 per month for half a floor. Prices for art storage “range widely, based on the size of the space, the term of the lease and the market,” Caroline Page-Katz, chief operating officer and president of UOVO, told Observer. “New York City is a different market from Denver. There is more space to house a fine art storage facility in Denver than in Manhattan, which raises the price there.”

Prices also vary depending on whether one rents a private room or stores crated objects in shared spaces. Some artworks are physically small but, once packed and crated, occupy considerable volume because crates are never stacked to prevent accidents from falls. That means even a modest number of works can require a relatively large and more expensive area.

But what actually makes facilities like Fortress, UOVO and Crozier so much more expensive than self-storage units is that these buildings are climate-controlled to museum standards (70°F, 50 percent relative humidity) and feature comprehensive security protocols. Many, though not all, have round-the-clock staffing to deter break-ins and immediately address any system failures. Fine art storage facilities are almost always single-use buildings, meaning they do not share space with unrelated tenants and are equipped with backup generators in case of power outages. (Self-storage sites, by contrast, are more akin to garages and susceptible to extreme temperature fluctuations and security breaches.)

Private collectors often receive reduced premiums on fine art insurance when storing works off site. “Insurance companies don’t like art in houses that only have monitoring systems,” Levin explained.

That isn’t to say accidents and thefts never occur at fine art storage sites—only that they are rare or at least rarely reported. A fire at Momart’s east London warehouse in 2004 destroyed hundreds of works by Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili and other notable artists. A fire at Artex’s warehouse in Dedham, Massachusetts, in 2005 damaged and destroyed quite a lot of art. A 38-ton Richard Serra sculpture went missing in Madrid in 1990 after being placed in a fine art storage facility that went into receivership in 1998; the museum that owned it didn’t inquire about it until 2006. In another case, Fine Art Logistics in London mistakenly disposed of a 1984 sculpture by Anish Kapoor. And in 2005, two employees at Fine Arts Express in St. Louis were caught stealing $4 million in artworks, which they attempted to fence through third parties.

Security is a key concern at fine art storage sites, not only because of the high value of the contents but because the spaces are hubs of activity. Gallery owners come and go—sometimes showing works to potential buyers in on-site viewing rooms, other times simply exchanging crates. Museum curators rotate artworks between storage and their institutions’ galleries. Collectors or their staff may visit to photograph pieces or digitize records. “We have rooms for photo shoots and can custom build facilities for clients,” James Hendy, senior vice president and general manager at Crozier, told Observer. “We can also provide digitizing and archival services for clients, if they like.”

Crozier, UOVO and Fortress also employ specially trained art handlers to pack, unpack and move works for collectors, dealers and institutions. Their climate-controlled vans and trucks are deployed during hurricanes, wildfires or other emergencies, and for less dramatic relocations like summer moves. And that brings us to the final differentiating factor. At facilities like those, storing art is only the beginning.

Angelica Daneo, chief curator at the Denver Art Museum, calls Rembrandt “one of the most celebrated artists of the 1600s” and an artist who “played a pivotal role in the development of European Art,” but until recently, residents of the Mile High City weren’t able to actually see any of his paintings unless they traveled somewhere else. The artist created close to 300 paintings during his career, but not every museum has one. Fortunately for Denver residents, that situation has been rectified—for two years, at least—thanks to the newly established Across the Nation program at Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery of Art that is lending works from its permanent collection to smaller and mid-sized museums around the United States.

The goal of the program is to share artworks from the National Gallery’s permanent collection with museums, many of which are in rural areas and mostly in western states that do not have pieces of this caliber to display in their communities. Ten museums (the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, the Boise Art Museum in Idaho, the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, the Figge Art Museum in Iowa, the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, the New Britain Museum of Art in Connecticut, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington and the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno) are part of the first round of loans, with more expected in the coming years.

“We have so much to offer; our collection is here for the nation, and we felt that we were missing an opportunity to share with more people,” Kate Haw, executive officer for programs, exhibitions and audience engagement at the National Gallery of Art, told Observer. “Many people may not be able to come to Washington to see the collection here on our campus. While we welcome four million visitors a year and lend very generously to special exhibitions and museums around the country and around the world, we felt that we could be doing more for the nation in communities. And, as we are the National Museum, we really wanted to be more proactive about how we shared.”

SEE ALSO: Why Provenance Is Still the Art World’s Blind Spot

The National Gallery’s curators put together a list of 700 American and European artworks from its collection, representing paintings and photographs—some dating back to the 15th century. The Flemish artist Hans Memling was sent to the Flint Institute of Arts, along with works by Sandro Botticelli and Andy Warhol, while others received 19th- and 20th-century French works (paintings by Henri Matisse, Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne went to the Whatcom Museum) and Modernist pieces (the Anchorage Museum was lent paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko and Nancy Graves, and the Nevada Museum of Art received seventy photographs by Dorothea Lange).

“The Nevada Museum of Art organized an exhibition called ‘Sagebrush and Solitude: Maynard Dixon in Nevada’ in 2024,” Ann M. Wolfe, senior curator and deputy director at the museum, told Observer. Dixon was a painter “married to Dorothea Lange, and we wanted to follow up the Dixon exhibition with a Lange exhibition.” The National Gallery of Art has a large number of photographs by Lange, and it offered to share the trove with the Nevada Museum of Art. “The partnership has been a great opportunity to work with the National Gallery.”

Most of the 700 artworks offered through the Across the Nation program were in storage, which meant it didn’t matter if you were in D.C.—you wouldn’t have been able to see them anyway. Pulling the pieces out of storage solved two problems: how to ensure there’s always room in the art vault and how to honor the museum’s collected works. The National Gallery made their offer more attractive by taking on the expense of crating, shipping and insuring the artworks they were lending. For their part, the borrowing museums needed to demonstrate that they had adequate conservation, proper climate controls and the ability to physically protect the works. Some staff members were invited to come to the National Gallery for training.

The largest museums have massive collections that are kept in storage and rarely make it to the exhibition galleries—the Met in New York has two million objects, while the Art Institute of Chicago has north of 300,000, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has roughly 450,000 and MoMA has around 200,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, media and performance artworks, architectural models and drawings, design objects and films, in addition to approximately two million film stills. In many cases, works are off view for good reason: some pieces are fragile and risky to pack and move or even display. “Many objects need to ‘rest,’” Charity Counts, executive director of the Association of Midwest Museums, told Observer. “It’s not wise to have something on display for an extended period that could fade from light exposure, for example.”

But other objects remain in storage because museum curators choose not to put them on display. They may have enough Renoirs on display, or the Renoirs in their galleries are better examples of the artist’s work than those in storage. In decades past, donors unloaded large numbers of artworks onto museums with conditions that pieces could not be sold, lent or traded away, and the museum curators and directors of the past often accepted a whole lot of material—some of which may have been misattributed or forgeries—because there was one gem in the pile that they really wanted. (Today’s museum officials are much less likely to accept donations that include conditions and find ways to cherry-pick what they really want.)

Museums try not to be static in their displays, swapping artworks and other items from their galleries with those in storage in order to broaden their story of the history of art, as well as lending pieces to other institutions that are organizing special exhibits. But that still leaves a great many objects owned by museums stuck in storage, probably never to see the light of day.

As to why more of the country’s major museums aren’t loaning out more works, consider that lending artworks from a museum’s permanent collection is not without risks. Jonathan Stuhlman, senior curator of American art at the Mint Museum, told Observer that loans may produce “wear-and-tear on the object. You wonder, do the people borrowing these works know how to care for them?” Additionally, lending art generates costs because facilitating loans requires back-end work on both sides and institutions have to hire a registrar to keep track of where pieces are and when they are due back.

Selecting the artworks to lend also takes time and effort, according to Haw. “We went into the collection, looked at works that didn’t have any sort of restrictions from donors or any other conditions making them too fragile to lend.” After the group of 700 works was identified, curators at the National Gallery sought out their counterparts at smaller institutions around the country, allowing them to choose works from across our collections. “They were the ones who dictated. We did not dictate what went to whom,” she clarified.

Museums frequently lend works to other museums, and special exhibitions at institutions usually consist of objects that were borrowed from a variety of other museums in the U.S. and elsewhere. “The Met lends to museums of all sizes throughout the country, as part of its active and ongoing outgoing loans program,” according to a spokeswoman. Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution works with more than 200 museums and libraries around the country to coordinate loans of objects for special shows, and the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas established a similar program, Art Bridges, which expands access to collections by facilitating long-term loans and traveling exhibitions between museums of all sizes. The Chicago-based Terra Foundation has its own loan program, offering works from its American art collection for special exhibits.

What distinguishes the National Gallery’s Across the Nation program is that its loans are not pegged to specific exhibitions but instead are intended to enhance or fill in gaps in permanent exhibits. Works by noted artists bring in visitors. “Renoir, Matisse, Cezanne, we don’t have that kind of work and that kind of name recognition in our museum,” Amy Chaloupka, chief curator at the Whatcom Museum, told Observer. “People are drawn to the museum when they see those names.”

The Across the Nation program could not have happened at a better time, Kahla Woodling DeSmit, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums, told Observer. “Previously, federal agencies like the Institute for Museums and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities would provide funding support for exhibitions and would often help address these costs,” she said. “However, under the current administration, many of these grants have been terminated within the last month, leaving many museums and cultural institutions concerned that their planned exhibitions may never open or that they’ll have to shoulder expenses that were once covered by federal grants.”