I came across this depressing article, “Everything is Private Equity” on Substack about the role of private equity in the broader world, and it inspired me to theme this year’s posts around money in the cultural sector – specifically with regard to material culture. It spun several threads that I want to yank, and this one about private equity starts the conversation well because it provokes a myriad of related questions.

Private equity often operates in the background, buying up all facets of American life. PE now touches nearly every sector of the economy. You could go an entire day — wake up in a PE-owned apartment, drop your kid at a PE-owned daycare, see a PE-owned doctor, pick up dinner from a PE-owned restaurant, come home and watch the local news on a PE-run TV station — without ever encountering a business that operates the way you assume businesses operate.

A further disclaimer, I have good relationships with some of the companies I write about here. I want to make it clear that it is my goal challenge assumptions and understand the current environment and not to slander (and I do not slander). My own business intends to manage and preserve cultural heritage no matter who owns, possesses, displays, or works with it. It still belongs to the world, and it all eventually changes hands.

The “Transvertical” Integration of Culture

The global art market currently undergoes a transformation into assets and commerce so profound that it rivals the shift from the patronage of the Medici to the emergence of the public auction house. We find ourselves in an era where the white glove art handler and the private equity investor share a climate-controlled service elevator in an industrial park on the edge of town. This phenomenon, elegantly termed by someone as the “transverticality” of the arts, describes the aggressive collapse of the traditional barriers between fine art, luxury, logistics, and financial engineering into a single, fluid category of high-velocity commerce. Historically, a boutique shipper or a family-owned insurance brokerage operated on a smaller scale, regional reach, and more DIY ethos. Today, many of those same entities increasingly give way to private equity firms seeking to industrialize the cultural infrastructure into mechanized assembly lines. There is a storyline, however, where big money can also mean the improvement of collections care by not merely shifting your perspective but also by taking action.

Private equity barging into the insurance, data, and logistical side of the art world completes the vertical integration of the industry. By owning the movers who transport the works, the warehouses that safeguard it, the software that catalogs it, and the brokers who insure it, private equity firms now stand to influence many stages of an artwork’s lifecycle and results in a structural shift that stands to fundamentally alter the incentives of the sector. While a conservator prioritizes an artist’s intention and a registrar prioritizes meticulous record keeping, a private equity owner typically prioritizes exit velocity, the speed at which a portfolio company achieves a sale or IPO, and EBITDA growth. This report explores the architecture of this ownership, the financial mechanisms driving consolidation, and the pros and cons that arise when we increasingly treat a cultural artifact as a collateralized asset. It also seeks to understand the changing role of those currently working in the environment.

Really Ripe Fruit

Private equity has consolidated under their umbrella several prominent companies dominating the landscape of art and culture care and management. By providing the essential infrastructure to allow the global art market to function, they, quite simply, became very good investments.

10 Large Private Equity-Owned Entities in the Arts and Culture Sector (2025-2026)

• Cadogan Tate: Fine Art Logistics & Storage

  • Purchased by TSG Consumer Partners

  • Also “partners” with (i.e. owns) companies like Pabst Blue Ribbon (appropriate), Stumptown Coffee (also appropriate), and Mavis Discount Tire

• Dietl: Fine Art Logistics

  • Purchased by Rock-it Cargo which is owned by Providence Equity Partners

  • Its portfolio includes other entertainment, media, and adjacent companies

• Masterpiece International: Fine Art Logistics

  • Purchased by Imperative Logistics Group (formerly Magnate), 2017, which is owned by Littlejohn & Co.

  • Portfolio includes other industrial, construction, and transportation companies

• Bonhams: International Auction House

  • Purchased by Pemberton Asset Management, 2025

  • Portfolio includes primarily finance-related companies

• Artlogic: Collections Management Software

  • Purchased by Cove Hill Partners, 2021

  • Portfolio includes other data and technology-focused companies in various sectors

  • January 2022, united ArtBase, exhibit-E, and galleryManager under the Artlogic brand. Merged with ArtCloud in 2025

• Howden Group: Fine Art & Specialty Insurance Broker

  • Major investment from General Atlantic, HgCapital, La Caisse

  • 3 of the 5 investors in Howden are private equity firms with a tech- and innovation-heavy focus

• Price Forbes: Art & Specie Insurance Broker

  • Part of The Ardonagh Group, which owns several specialty insurance brokerages

  • The Ardonagh Group features investment from Madison Dearborn Partners, Stone Point Capital

  • Both PE firms focus on the insurance and financial sectors

• Convex Group: Specialty Art & Specie Insurance Carrier

  • Acquired by Onex which has major investment from AIG

  • Onex invests in a wide array of industries and AIG insures basically everything

• Athena Art Finance: Art-Secured Lending

  • Acquired by Willow Wealth which has major investment from Tarsadia Investments, RedBird Capital

  • A focus on art as an asset and leverage in the wealth management context

• Masterworks: Fractional Ownership of Art

  • Backed (but now owned) by Left Lane Capital and Galaxy Interactive

  • Left Lane Capital seeks to invests in tech-oriented companies doing really normal things

  • Galaxy Interactive focuses on interactive games and technology but also backs Verisart, a blockchain-backed digital COAs

These firms represent a deliberate pattern of build-to-exit or build-to-grow strategies where specialized, niche businesses are rolled up into global platforms that vertically build or diversify their investment portfolios. Private equity firms prefer these sectors because they are often asset-light on the brokerage side or possess significant real estate moats on the storage side. By industrializing the process of art management, these firms aim to capture the fees associated with the increasing “turnover” of collections—the frequency with which art is sold, shipped, and re-insured.

The Freight “Roll-Up”

The fine art logistics sector has transformed into the primary theater for private equity consolidation. This industry is particularly attractive because it serves a client base—museums, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, and mega-galleries—that is relatively price-insensitive but highly demanding of specialized expertise.

Global Critical Logistics and the $1 Billion Move

The 2025 acquisition of Global Critical Logistics (GCL), the parent company of Dietl International and Rock-it Cargo, by Providence Equity Partners for a total of $1 billion represents a watershed moment for the sector. GCL provides the logistical muscle for the world’s most iconic moments—from the transport of delicate old master paintings for international blockbuster exhibitions to the massive equipment movements for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.

The strategic logic here focuses on the monetization of mission-critical events. Whether it is a stadium tour or a high-value Art Basel booth, the cost of failure is so high that providers can command premium margins. Providence, which has a long history of investing in entertainment and sports, views art logistics as an extension of the broader experience economy. The integration of Dietl (art-focused) and Rock-it (entertainment-focused) allows the firm to leverage “white-glove” handling capabilities across multiple high-value verticals.

Before the Providence acquisition, GCL operated under ATL Partners, which established the holding company in 2022 to diversify its brands. The shift to Providence indicates a move from a diversify-and-hold strategy to a scale-and-dominate strategy. Providence aims to capitalize on organic and inorganic growth opportunities, essentially meaning they will use the $1 billion platform to buy even more regional shippers. Indeed, Dietl has already begun to do this with the acquisition of Delaware Freeport, Delaware National Art Company, Techno Export, and Registrar Technologies.

Masterpiece International and the Imperative Model

Masterpiece International, another pillar of American art forwarding, followed a parallel trajectory. Acquired by Magnate Worldwide (which subsequently rebranded as Imperative Logistics Group) and backed by Littlejohn & Co., the firm has focused on expanding its domestic and international footprint. Imperative Logistics operates as an asset-light third-party provider, focusing on freight brokerage and customs compliance rather than owning a massive fleet of trucks.

This model prioritizes technology and data transparency. Imperative has invested heavily in platforms like “ATLAS” and “artWISE” to provide real-time shipment updates, responding to a market that now demands the same digital visibility for a Rothko that a consumer expects for a standard package. However, this digitalization comes with a focus on credit metrics; S&P Global ratings for Imperative in late 2024 highlighted a Debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 6.0x, a figure that underscores the high leverage used to fund these acquisitions.

Both acquisitions fundamentally differ from the Iron Mountain acquisition of Crozier Fine Arts. Iron Mountain, a publicly traded company, purchased Crozier to leverage its existing real estate network for long-term storage annuity. In contrast, the private equity owners of Dietl and Masterpiece are pursuing EBITDA growth through transaction volume. In other words, Crozier wants art patiently waiting in a dark warehouse and Dietl and Masterpiece need more and more art moving through customs.

Public Company vs. Private Equity vs. Venture Capital

To understand the unique nature of private equity involvement, one must compare it to the “strategic” acquisition model. Iron Mountain’s purchase of Crozier Fine Arts in 2015 provides the perfect, privately-owned foil to Cadogan Tate’s private equity and Convelio’s venture capital.

Stewardship as Annuity

Iron Mountain operates as the largest records and information management company worldwide, managing over 2,600 facilities. When it acquired Crozier, it viewed the art world as an “adjacent business” that could benefit from its vast real estate network. The goal was diversification. Iron Mountain seeks to provide “secure, reliable, and efficient solutions” for physical and digital assets throughout their lifecycle.

The Crozier model focuses on storage. An object in storage generates a steady, monthly fee with very little variable cost. Iron Mountain even jealously gorged itself by acquiring companies like Artex, Martinspeed, Cirkers, Christie’s Storage Facility (London), and Fairfield Fine Art. For a strategic owner like Iron Mountain, the art has a long-term lease in their real estate portfolio.

Stewardship as Exit Strategy

Cadogan Tate, on the other hand, models a more “classic” private equity model. Founded in 1977, the company spent decades building a blue-chip reputation based on word-of-mouth referrals. Before its acquisition by TSG Consumer Partners in 2022, Cadogan Tate operated a steady, but low key footprint of seven key hubs, including London, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. Its protocol was defined by a traditional approach to logistics.

Following the TSG takeover, the company underwent a radical transformation driven by an aggressive buy-and-build strategy. Currently in early 2026, Cadogan Tate has completed seven acquisitions expanding its physical presence to over 12 global locations. The investment allows for the implementation of advanced digital inventory platforms, a shift toward aggressive digital marketing, and the rebranding of the company as a unified “home services platform” that integrates fine art handling with luxury interior installations. This evolution reflects a broader trend: the transition of art services from local stewardship to institutional, data-driven global infrastructure, arguably out of necessity.

Stewardship as Moonshot

Another notable player parachuting into this art version of Fortnite, Convelio, has secured major venture capital backing. While private equity typically buys majority stakes in mature, cash-flow-positive companies to restructure them, venture capital invests in early-stage, high-growth startups with minority stakes, focusing on long-term, high-risk growth. I will not dwell on these distinctions, but the gambit here blatantly points to a tech-oriented disruption of art logistics.

The Private Equity Strategy: Scalability as Exit

Private equity firms, such as Littlejohn or Providence, do not have a twenty-year horizon. They operate within a three-to-seven-year fund cycle. The typical goal is to buy a firm, “engineer change,” and sell it for a significant profit – often to other private equity firms.

• Before Acquisition: These firms (Dietl, Masterpiece, Cadogan Tate) were often family-owned or founder-led. They prioritized long-term client relationships and specialized handling expertise. They typically carried low debt loads.

• After Acquisition: These firms are integrated into holding companies (GCL, Imperative). They are saddled with debt to fund further acquisitions. They implement sophisticated CRM and ERP tools to “industrialize” the reporting process. Success is measured by margin expansion and the ability to operate independently of the original ownership.

The similarity lies in the professionalization of the industry. Both models provide the art market with better software, nicer, more secure warehouses, and more standardized shipping. However, the private equity model creates a “velocity-first” culture that sometimes contradicts the goal of long-term preservation.

From a stewardship point of view, however, we aspire to a certain level of care and efficiency whose costs tend to deny their implementation. Thus, before we impulsively conclude that “big business must be bad”, we must also recognize that big business can also allow institutions to have greater access to those life-improving tools and services we always wanted. These services were often too expensive for smaller companies to implement thus relegating them “old school” status. For example, I like having a digital bill of lading devoid of illegible handwriting; I like having an online client portal to check my storage inventory; and I like the ability to check online the status of my international shipment. The realities of these improvements complicate perceptions.

Mid-Tier Mambo

Bonhams Enters the Chat

The acquisition of Bonhams by private equity—led by Epiris in 2018 and its subsequent transition to Pemberton Asset Management in October 2025—represents a textbook roll-up strategy aimed at institutionalizing the auction mid-market. By purchasing Bonhams, the investors gained more than just a 230-year-old heritage brand; they acquired a federated platform—a decentralized network where independent, self-contained systems and companies work together as a single, unified unit while maintaining their autonomy—capable of absorbing regional competitors to achieve instant global scale. Under Epiris, Bonhams executed an aggressive series of acquisitions—including Skinner (US), Bukowskis (Sweden), and Cornette de Saint Cyr (France)—to create a unified global network that could out-compete smaller regional houses while avoiding the overhead costs of Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

This deal relates to private equity’s investments in logistics (like Cadogan Tate) and insurance (like Price Forbes) through the common goal of transverticality. The intent for the buyers is to control the “transactional infrastructure” of the art world. Just as private equity firms aim to own the warehouses where art is stored and the brokers that insure it, owning Bonhams allows them to control the point of sale. This creates a high-volume yield engine that generates reliable fees across sixty collecting categories. For the investors, Bonhams is a data-rich marketplace that serves the resilient $1 million to $10 million price segment, offering a diversified hedge against the more volatile “trophy” market while feeding into the broader financialized ecosystem of art as an asset class.

Consolidating the Risk

The entry of private equity into the insurance side of the art world completes the financialization circuit. The most significant trend here is the shift from “Carriers” (who hold the risk and pay the claims) to “Brokers and MGAs” (who manage the sales and underwriting).

Howden Group and the Talent War

The Howden Group, backed by General Atlantic and HgCapital, has aggressively pursued a strategy of mergers and acquisitions combined with multi-hundred-head talent lifts. In early 2026, Howden acquired Atlantic Global Risk, a top US transactional liability broker, in a deal valuing the firm at over $500 million.

Howden’s strategy is simple: become the largest specialty broker in the world by rolling up boutique firms and their expert staff. Their equity was valued at approximately £10 billion ($13.4 billion) in 2024. By consolidating art insurance brokers, Howden gains control over the gatekeeping of risk, allowing them to influence terms to the global insurance market.

The Ardonagh Group and Price Forbes

The Ardonagh Group, valued at $14 billion in 2025 following an investment from Stone Point Capital, operates the Price Forbes brand—the largest independent broker at Lloyd’s of London for fine art and specie. Price Forbes manages $7 billion in gross written premiums.

The consolidation in this sector has changed the underwriting process. Historically, art insurance relied more on the expert eye of an underwriter who knew the specific risks of a 15th-century tempera on wood. Today, private equity-backed brokers are under pressure to industrialize. This leads to algorithmic underwriting—using massive datasets to price risk rather than individual expertise. While this makes insurance cheaper for blue-chip art, it makes it increasingly difficult to insure non-traditional, contemporary, or risky works that do not fit into a standard data model.

Convex Group: Specialty Art & Specie Insurance Carrier

In early 2026, Onex Corporation and AIG completed a landmark $7 billion transaction to take control of Convex Group, with Onex holding a 63% majority stake and AIG holding 35%. Unlike brokers who merely sell policies, Convex is a “carrier” that actually holds the risk. The strategy behind this massive deal is for Onex to establish a “core platform” that generates steady, recurring fee income and net income. For AIG, the $2.1 billion investment provides a “quota share” partnership, allowing the insurance giant to participate in high-yield specialty art risks without the operational overhead. This deal reflects the ultimate PE goal: merging “smart” underwriting talent with massive institutional balance sheets to dominate the insurance of the world’s most valuable cultural objects.

Financializing Financiers

Athena Art Finance: Art-Secured Lending

Originally launched by The Carlyle Group, Athena was acquired for $170 million by Willow Wealth (formerly Yieldstreet), a platform backed by RedBird Capital Partners and Tarsadia Investments. The acquisition was a strategic move to “democratize” art-secured lending by taking institutional-grade, blue-chip art loans and fractionalizing them for a broader base of investors. For RedBird and Tarsadia, Athena is not just a lender; it is a “yield engine”, an automated system designed to maximize financial returns (yield) on assets by actively managing, compounding, or distributing them across various high-performing, income-generating opportunities, that converts the aesthetic value of a Picasso or Warhol into a predictable, asset-backed financial product. It integrates seamlessly into a wealth management portfolio that seeks to offer alternative “uncorrelated” assets to clients who want to leverage their collections for liquidity.

Masterworks: Equity v. Debt-ity

Masterworks is a fintech platform that securitizes blue-chip paintings, allowing retail investors to buy and trade fractional shares in multi-million dollar artworks. While not fully owned by private equity in the sense of a majority buyout like Cadogan Tate, it is a high-growth private equity backed company, relying on institutional giants like Left Lane Capital and Galaxy Interactive to provide the warehouse liquidity and regulatory muscle needed to treat art as a liquid asset class. Unlike Athena Art Finance, which functions as a lender providing debt-based liquidity to existing collectors, Masterworks operates on an equity model, directly buying works themselves to create a synthetic market for the masses. This distinction highlights the two sides of private capital’s art strategy: Athena leverages the value of what is already owned by a collector, while Masterworks attracts new investors to buy shares in the works it owns to drive market.

Crack in the Dam: Why Private Equity Wants In

One might ask why a sophisticated financial firm would want to get into the business of moving dirty crates or insuring cracking paintings. The art sector possesses several characteristics that make it a target-rich environment for private equity firms.

1. Fragmentation and Arbitrage

The art logistics and insurance markets were, until recently, composed of hundreds of small, regional players. This fragmentation creates arbitrage opportunities—the ability for a large firm to buy small companies at low multiples and roll them up (a.k.a. consolidate them) into a larger platform that commands a higher multiple on the public market or in a secondary sale. The cartelization of the primary market is being replaced by a corporate structure where information is centralized in a few private equity hands.

2. Resilience of High-Net-Worth Wealth

Art is a passion asset that often behaves differently than the broader stock market. During periods of economic uncertainty, ultra-high-net-worth individuals continue to park capital in established, historically validated names. Private equity firms view the infrastructure supporting these assets as a recession-proof bet on global wealth concentration.

3. Mission-Critical Dependency

Museums and collectors cannot simply hire a standard moving company to transport a $50 million painting. The specialized knowledge required for art handling creates a moat around the business. Once a firm like Crozier or Cadogan Tate establishes that trust in the market, they can command premium pricing. Private equity firms love businesses with high barriers to entry and sticky customers.

4. The Data Play

By owning the software (Artlogic, for example) and the shipping records (Masterpiece & Dietl), private equity firms gain unparalleled insight into the movement and valuation of art. In a market where information is the most valuable commodity, amassing and owning proprietary data allows these firms to see trends before the rest of the market does.

The Gallery Gap: Why Private Equity Avoids the Dealer

While private equity continues to colonize the shippers, insurers, and software providers, it has notably avoided acquiring individual art galleries. One might wonder why firms like KKR or Blackstone do not simply buy a dozen prestigious galleries and expand them into a global franchise.

A report from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) highlights several barriers.

• Reliance on Key Individuals: A gallery’s value often resides entirely in the personal relationships and “eye” of the founder. If Larry Gagosian or David Zwirner leaves, the brand loses its primary asset. Private equity firms prefer “system-dependent” businesses over “people-dependent” ones.

• Lack of Commercial Focus: Investors perceive a lack of commercial focus among creative businesses. Galleries [arguably] prioritize artistic or cultural outcomes (TBD?) over financial returns, which makes them less appealing to profit-driven investors. Another way to say this, in a down market, sales will drop but people still have to pay for storage, insurance, and database subscriptions.

• Opacity and Risk: The primary art market is notoriously opaque and insular. Access is limited, and information remains scarce and unreliable. Private equity firms require granular, data-driven assumptions to justify their investment multiples.

• Low Scalability: Unlike a shipping company, which can add more trucks and warehouses to increase revenue, a gallery is limited by the output of its artists and the finite attention of its top collectors.

Instead of buying galleries, private equity firms buy the infrastructure that museums and galleries rely on to exist. They would rather own the stage (the logistics and software) than the performers (the artists and dealers).

Incentive Conflicts in the PE Model

The heavy involvement of private equity prioritizes financial and efficiency goals that often sit at odds with the traditional preservation goals of the arts sector. This creates several specific incentive conflicts that every arts professional must understand.

For example, massive companies make shipping easier to execute and track. The increased efficiency can reduce shipping times, increase the ease of international logistics, and allow professionals to execute more shipments in the same or less time. With more safe, traceable shipments, industrialized insurers have kept premiums relatively low which encourages more shipping but antagonizes preservation.

1. Volume vs. Preservation

As noted, the private equity model for a firm like Dietl or Cadogan Tate is built on EBITDA growth. To meet their annual growth targets, these companies must maximize “turns”—the number of times an object is crated, shipped, and installed.

• The Conflict: Collection stewards want objects to stay in stable, climate-controlled environments. However, shipping is the primary cause of physical damage and insurance claims.

• The Result: Private equity ownership incentivizes a touring economy where art is moved more frequently for fairs, exhibition, and auctions. This increases fossil fuel usage, expense, and the risk of damage to delicate works.

2. Efficiency vs. Expertise (The Underwriting Gap)

As previously mentioned, private equity-backed brokers (like those under Ardonagh or Howden) are under pressure to industrialize the process. This leads to increased algorithmic underwriting and decreased individual expertise.

• The Conflict: Reduced object-specific expertise in favor of broader risk assessments.

• The Result: While this makes insurance cheaper and faster for ultra high value pieces, it makes it harder to insure non-traditional, contemporary, or “risky” works that do not fit into a standard data model.

3. Sustainability and The Green Wash

Many private equity firms now have strict ESG mandates. However, a private equity-owned shipping firm may announce carbon-neutral policies and goals, but its core business model requires the heavy use of fossil fuels to meet the rapid-fire deadlines of the global art fair calendar.

• The Conflict: The market desire for sustainable practices exists within an inherently fossil-fuel-based industry.

• The Result: Sustainability risks becoming a marketing layer over a business model that is structurally anti-sustainable. They usually attain carbon-neutrality through buying offsets.

4. The Financialization of the Object

When a private equity firm owns the lender (Athena/Yieldstreet), the storage (Cadogan Tate), and the platform to securitize it (Masterworks), the artwork is no longer merely a cultural object—it is a collateralized asset.

• The Conflict: Art as an asset (a.k.a. money) transforms the purpose of collecting from cultural heritage preservation and aspirational ideas to wealth accumulation.

• The Result: Every player in the chain is incentivized to keep the art’s appraised value rising, as their fees and interest rates are tied to that valuation. This can create a valuation bubble where the financial stakeholders have more to lose from a market correction than the collectors themselves.

The Good and the Bad: A Nuanced View

The involvement of private equity is not inherently negative; it can welcome much-needed capital, efficiency, and professionalism to a fragmented industry.

The Good

• Infrastructure Investment: The art market is finally getting the infrastructure it needs—better software, more secure warehouses, and more efficient shipping.

• Technology Advancement: Acquisitions by firms like Cove Hill have accelerated the development of platforms like Artlogic, making collections management software more advanced and offering more data analysis.

• Global Reach: Once small regional firms can now offer global solutions by tapping into the networks of their private equity parents.

• Financial Stability: The move to private credit (as seen with Bonhams and Pemberton) can remove “debt overhangs” and provide the balance sheet strength needed for long-term growth.

The Bad

• Job Losses and Wage Compression: Private equity takeovers can result in job losses or wage reduction as firms seek to streamline operations or expand. This is particularly devastating in a sector that relies on specialized, long-term expertise.

• Asset Stripping: Some private equity firms may “strip for parts,” selling off real estate assets and forcing companies to pay rent on property they once owned.

• Homogenization of Strategy: A market dominated by fewer, larger firms could inhibit competition and limit options for institutions.

• Loss of Boutique Expertise: As specialized firms are absorbed into larger entities, the “nimble” and “bespoke” approach that collectors value may be lost to bureaucracy.

Zig When the Others Zag

For the independent company or the value-driven institution, competing with a private equity-backed giant requires a strategic shift. You cannot out-scale them, so you must essentially provide a different service. In big cities (a.k.a. “markets”) many small companies – often started by alums of larger companies – continue to optimistically attract clients and coexist with the big ones.

1. Emphasize Human Expertise: Private equity firms prioritize standardized processes. Independent firms should double down on the more human elements and the specialized knowledge of their staff.

2. Focus on the Objects: Position your firm as “object first” whenever possible instead of emphasizing pure speed.

3. Community Relevance: While private equity platforms seek global scalability, independent firms can focus on contributing to the artistic community and deep, generational relationships.

4. Data Sovereignty: Ensure that clients have complete control of their provided data and that it does not get repurposed for nefarious reasons.

Preservation v. Growth

Is this the “enshittification” of the blood stream that keeps the arts alive, the annexation of well-intentioned labor by money-seeking money siphoned into the sector’s empty tanks, or a lifeline loan for companies who could never afford the rent on our preservationist expectations? The reality is most likely all of the above and not a binary choice between preservation and growth. There seems to be space for a diverse set of services. It is a false choice to pit preservation against growth. We need both to meet the expectation in our current environment.

The way to work within this system is to act as a friction point. Vary your institution’s service providers and nurture a competitive marketplace. Seek out smaller vendors for select projects and avoid consolidating all of your services in a small group of companies. Recognize, too, that large institutions often need industrial-scale services and storage beyond the capabilities of smaller companies. By diversifying your vendors, you vote with your budget and encourage competition.

A company being prepped for sale will behave differently than one with a twenty-year horizon. Understanding how the money flows—and what it incentivizes—is the only way to make better decisions about where to put your institution’s money. In other words, recognize when the incentive works in your favor.

To resign ourselves to cynicism, however, assumes we have no choice. They, after all, have to please the consumer, if they want to continue to take our money. In other words, if a wealthy person takes you out to dinner, make sure to order the dishes you cannot afford to buy on your own (and do not forget to order dessert). Economies of scale can sometimes benefit us by lowering prices and nourishing some of our under-resourced collections care appetites. Just understand that “Power resides where men believe it resides.”

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Biggest Art Lawsuits, Insurance Claims, and Controversies of 2025

A.K.A. the debates that may change how we work.

I. The Legislative Restoration: Restitution and Repatriation

The legal landscape for historical justice underwent a radical cleaning this year, stripping away the grime of procedural delays that have long obscured the path to recovery.

• The HEAR Act of 2025 (Expansion): In December 2025, the U.S. Senate unanimously propelled this landmark legislation which significantly broadens the 2016 law. The Act aggressively eliminates sunset clauses and bars traditional defenses such as "laches" (unreasonable delay) or "international comity" (one country deferring to another). This shift ensures that the heirs of Nazi victims can pursue looted works without the clock acting as an additional constraint.

• The Cleveland Museum of Art Repatriation: Following decades of diplomatic maneuvering, the museum finally agreed to return a $20 million bronze statue to Turkey. This decision underscores a growing institutional realization that possession does not always equal provenance.

• Estate of Leffman v. Metropolitan Museum of Art: This ongoing litigation continues to scrutinize the Met regarding pre-sale diligence for works allegedly lost during the chaos of the Second World War. It remains a cautionary tale for every collections manager who views old provenance as settled provenance.

II. The Silicon Scuffles: Generative AI and Copyright

The courts are currently sketching the boundaries of creativity in an era where the artist is often an algorithm.

• Thaler v. Perlmutter: A U.S. court definitively affirmed that artwork created entirely by Artificial Intelligence cannot receive copyright protection. The ruling establishes that the human spark is not merely a romantic notion but a legal necessity.

• News & Authors v. OpenAI/Microsoft: A massive, consolidated multi-district litigation (MDL) in the Southern District of New York is currently managing twelve high-profile cases. These authors and news outlets allege that the unlicensed training of AI models on their copyrighted works constitutes a digital heist of unprecedented scale.

• Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy: The Supreme Court held that the Copyright Act allows monetary recovery for any timely infringement claim, regardless of the historical distance of the original offense. This ruling effectively razes the statute of limitations for damages.

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III. The Insurance Absurdities: "Oomph" and Disavowal

In the world of high-dollar claims, the definition of damage has become increasingly abstract, leading to fascinating clashes between collectors and carriers.

• The Perelman "Oomph" Lawsuit: In September 2025, a New York judge rejected billionaire Ronald Perelman’s $410 million claim against Lloyd’s of London. Perelman argued that five masterworks by Warhol, Ruscha, and Twombly lost their "vibrancy" and "oomph" following a 2018 fire. The court ruled that intangible loss does not constitute physical damage, dismissing the claim.

• Drax Fine Art v. Sam Gilliam Foundation: This $6 million lawsuit, filed in July 2025, challenges the foundation’s disavowal of a 1972 drape painting. The foundation claims a restoration damaged the work irreparably, while the collectors argue this is a form of market manipulation. It highlights the power of an estate to negate the attribution of a work with a single statement.

• Beloff Estate v. Pace Gallery: Filed in early 2025, this suit accuses Pace Gallery of tortious interference after the gallery disputed the authenticity of a Louise Nevelson sculpture just moments before it was to be auctioned at Sotheby’s.

IV. Institutional Implosions and Frauds

The business side of art often mirrors the drama of a Greek tragedy, replete with hubris and spectacular falls from grace.

• Guggenheim v. Asher: The 37-year legacy of the advisory firm Guggenheim Asher Associates collapsed in a spectacular legal blowout. The founders filed mutual lawsuits alleging fraud, tax evasion, and the misappropriation of over $20 million.

• Grossman LLP v. Philip Falcone: A major fraud judgment was obtained against hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone in late 2025, marking a significant victory for transparency in the private market. Falcone sued his lender over loan defaults on art collateral (a diamond ring in this case), but the law firm Grossman LLP counter-sued for fraud, proving Falcone lied about the piece’s status, leading to a significant fraud judgment against Falcone.

• Jeff Koons Copyright Victory: In a rare moment of defense, Jeff Koons defeated a four-year copyright lawsuit in April 2025 after a judge ruled the plaintiff’s claims were time-barred.

V. The Physical Plunders: Security and Theft

Despite our digital obsessions, the physical artifact remains vulnerable to the old-fashioned smash-and-grab.

• The Louvre Jewel Heist: A major security breach in 2025 exposed critical gaps in the museum’s defense of its high-value decorative arts. It served as a stark reminder that a clever theif can still unlock the most fortified institutions, and caused every registrar in the world to say “I told you so”.

• The "America" Gold Toilet Convictions: In March 2025, two men were finally convicted for the 2019 theft of Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.1 million solid gold toilet. It is a relief to see this flush of justice go down the drain.

VI. Controversies of Governance and Censorship

Institutions often find themselves trapped between their funding sources and their social responsibilities.

• Smithsonian Censorship & DEI: Artist Amy Sherald canceled her solo show at the National Portrait Gallery and, instead, installed it at the Baltimore Museum of Art after the institution attempted to redact a work depicting a transgender woman. This occurred as the U.S. government pressured the Smithsonian to dismantle its DEI department amid threats of federal funding cuts to the institution.

• British Museum "Pink Ball" Backlash: The museum faced international condemnation for hosting a gala in the gallery housing the Parthenon Marbles. Greece branded the event an insult proving once again that a party in a contested space is never just a party.

• Noguchi Museum Keffiyeh Ban: The museum faced significant protests and the high-profile rejection of awards (notably by author Jhumpa Lahiri) over a staff dress code policy banning the Palestinian keffiyeh.

Sources for Further Research:

• Recent Developments in Intellectual Property Law 2025 - American Bar Association

• Art Law Bulletin - September 2025 - JD Supra

• Art Case Update - May 2025 - Guest Work Agency

• 8 Controversies That Rocked the Art World in 2025 - Artnet News

• Copyright Cases To Watch In 2025 - Kirkland & Ellis LLP

• The Year in Review: 2025 | Institute of Art and Law

A Mirror Staring at a Mirror

If we “reflect” on the year’s reflections, we not only create another reflection but also a new reflection altogether.

Mirrors reflect, and so can people. Therefore, I will not simply “reflect” on the past year but create something else altogether: a reflection on my reflections. Of course, I want you to know that I recognize my good fortune, appreciate all that I have, and acknowledge all those around me who contribute to that good fortune. However, I already do a lot of reflecting (though maybe not publicly) and want to contemplate the steady stream of reflections forced upon me throughout the year.

With every payroll that I successfully process and every bill I pay, I feel immense thanks that it happens at all because sometimes it almost does not happen. I know when the money leaves me and slides into a freelancer’s account, it helps them to pay their rent, to work in their studio, to buy holiday gifts, or to simply buy some mozzarella sticks at a dive bar on a Friday night. That is so paternalistically satisfying. I appreciate that every paycheck that arrives funds these payrolls and bolsters this business because sometimes they do not arrive. Yet the business breathes another breath. These regular near-death experiences (that is a little extreme I will admit) are the world’s landlords forcing me to peer into the mirror every week or two.

I also acknowledge that for everyone, the chord does not resolve. This year, many colleagues lost their jobs, got furloughed, and/or their institutions permanently closed and prompted another example of involuntary self reflection – both for them and for myself. Many chose not to stay in the industry. Some will go back to school. For some, it will be a wildfire that seeds a new forest, and for others, it simply razes the entire neighborhood. Seeing a gallery close, an institution on strike, or the government shut down, naturally, one asks themself “Am I prepared for this?” or “What would I do if that issue confronted me?”

Therefore, I want to make it crystal clear that through these regular periods of reflection throughout the year – voluntary and involuntary – I appreciate that I do have my own business as well as the ability to express that appreciation to an audience. I recognize all those who have helped me and continue to help me make J.T. Robinette and Art Handler Network possible. I recognize all the people in the network that do great work daily that ultimately permits clients to continue to trust us. Sure, skill and experience play a role, but so, too, do unquantifiables such as luck and the seeming unconditional generosity of others. Thank you.

In this detail of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, do we watch the artist paint the king and queen reflected in the mirror behind him? Or, are we, the viewer, the king or queen getting their likeness painted? Or, is it the portrait being painted that is reflected in the mirror? The answer requires reflection on a reflection.

The word “reflection”, therefore, does not fully capture my current state. Reflecting involves just looking into a mirror. The holidays this year have forced me to realize that, though I already regularly recognize and appreciate all that I have because sometimes they feel close to going away, like Las Meninas, I must contemplate the mirror itself. A mirror staring at a mirror. A meditative moment that flashes all the previous reflections before your eyes. Reflecting on those reflections creates a Kusama’s worth of reflections, and the summation of those reflections is its own seasonal condition.

Race to [Get to] the Bottom [of This]

Of course, I would write about the cost of contract labor.

Yes, I have a horse in this race; I have skin in the game; I have a literal 100% stake in the company. Consequently, I HAVE to discuss this even at the risk of sounding defensive. I take the risk for the broader goal of education as I often get asked about the nature of my rates (which go beyond even what an independent contractor would charge but with additional value). I believe that it remains an important reminder for ethical hiring practices but also in the face of a world that has gotten more expensive. While most salaried employees in the United States will see 2–3% average cost-of-living salary increases this year and moving forward, independent museum professionals (IMPs) or independent contractors do not raise prices often nor do institutions raise their budget expectations for contractors often enough. While museum employees unionize and strike, freelancers’ rates have largely stagnated. This post does not aim to bemoan hiring managers like a condescending adult (“you should know better…”), but to inform.

I will caveat this whole piece by saying that it takes 2 to tango. In other words, contractors themselves should also avoid working for less than their preferred rate if at all possible. By working for less than you believe you are worth, you set a precedent and help to establish a “market rate” for the job. If you work for less money, I recommend seeking other forms of non-financial compensation such as recommendations to other potential clients, use of a client’s name in promotional materials, an guaranteed extended period of work, or something else of value to the contractor.

Despite (or because of?) my obvious position, I will let someone else do most of the talking on this subject of independent contractor rates. In 2021 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) released this article by MJ Hagan and Avi Decter called “Ethical Contracting: Is Your Museum Doing It?” I will include some excerpts of that article as well as the companion paper put out by AAM and the Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists (ARCS) “Working with Independent Museum Professionals A guide to help museums find and work with IMPs”

IMPs spend approximately 25 to 35 percent of their time on non-billable hours, which includes creating proposals. If you’ve narrowed down the list of bidders to the final candidates, consider compensating them with a stipend for their proposals.

This seems like a good place to start in “Ethical Contracting…”

In addition to their base pay, salaried staff at museums typically receive around 30 percent in fringe benefits, plus paid sick leave and vacation time. The museum also covers the costs of overhead—workspace, utilities, and insurance. IMPs, in contrast, must cover all these costs themselves. Thus, consultant rates two or three times higher than the going rate for staff salaries are generally closer to equivalent than would appear at first glance.

Consider, also, that rarely does a contractor work the same number of days as a permanent employee purely based on the timing of jobs. In other words, one rarely ends one contract and immediately begins another on an indefinite basis. One has to constantly generate more work and projects do not often adjust to a contractor’s schedule. As a result, when a contractor does not work, they do not get paid.

From “Working with IMPS…”

IMP Rates

The prices that IMPs charge can vary enormously, and may depend on a range of factors such as experience, value provided, locality, costs associated with the project (equipment, travel expenses, materials and so on), the ‘going rate,’ competition and demand for services, the length of the project, the complexity of the project and the project risk.

In general, regardless of whether an IMP employs an hourly rate, a day rate, or a flat fee, an IMP should be paid more than an employee. It is neither fair nor appropriate to take a comparable employee’s annual salary and split it by the number of working days to give you an indication of an IMP’s day rate, as this does not take into account:

• The additional costs that IMPs incur (e.g., business insurance, self-employment taxes, retirement contributions, professional services such as accounting, IT equipment, subscription services and tools, office space, training, marketing)

• That IMPs cannot spend every working day on billable work as they need to spend time on new business development, marketing, accounting, training and self-development, office administration, etc

• That IMPs do not have any paid annual leave or paid sick leave when reviewing IMP rates, it can be helpful to keep all these expenses and factors in mind. After expenses, taxes, and benefits, the ‘take home’ pay of an IMP is considerably less than their rate. When negotiating rates with an IMP you should be respectful of their right to determine the value of their own labor.

I will additionally offer that proposals from independent contractors often contain plans for realizing large projects that get appropriated as the new “scope of work” by a hiring institution while they decline to proceed with the contractor who devised the plan in favor of in-house help or a separate contractor altogether. A nefarious practice all too common in the field.

Naturally, every hiring institution will respond that they just do not have the budget to pay more despite wanting to do so. While I understand the argument, I also see the amount of money spent on other tasks and services. Simply put, it is not a priority. Next fiscal year, either ask for fewer credentials in return for a lower pay rate, or pay more for experience while reducing other costs (hello, traditional couriers). One even could take a more holistic approach and hire fewer permanent staff and hire specialists as needed. Here you save on employee benefits which averages $12.77 per hour worked and translates to roughly $26,561.60 annually for private industry workers according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In summary, contractors should say no to low-paying jobs in order to push up the market rates, or at the very least, demand non-monetary compensation for their time.

Institutionally, attempt to cultivate a reputation as a great place to work and attract the best contractors to your field. Often, the best way to reduce costs on a project is through efficiency provided by an experienced hand at the helm. “Buy cheap buy twice” as the saying goes.

Despite what seems like a take-it-or-leave-it tone, I do not wish to suggest an adversarial relationship between institutions or contractors. Far from it. Most contractors come from institutional positions and fully understand the handcuffs in which hirers find themselves. I see it as the contractors’ job to educate the institutions as to their position and merit as well as to stand up for themselves.

TALKING GALLERIES NEW YORK 2024

In collaboration with Schwartzman&

April 8–9 2024

The Spiral by Tishman Speyer

Panel discussion “The Future of Public Art Institution: Ensuring Financial Survival”

Speakers:

Deana Haggag, Program Officer, Mellon Foundation

Glenn D. Lowry, The David Rockefeller Director, The Museum of Modern Art

Pete Scantland, President and CEO, Orange Barrel Media

Moderator: Julia Halperin, Journalist

Key topics:

• Th financial challenges of public institutions

• The relationships between donors and institutions

• Additional revenue streams for museums

• How policy and legislation affect non-profit institutions currently

• The community’s role in sustaining institutions

“We’re all in the cultural sector and the things museums remind me is that most things don’t survive. We see different civilizations and all the things they’ve left behind that don’t exist anymore. We should remember that we, too, are heading in this direction where our civilization as we know it will cease to exist. This is just what happens. I think that when things close, they make space for new things.” –Deana Haggag, Mellon Foundation

“We have a $1,700,000,000 endowment which was $225,000,000 in 1995 when I started. So we've grown the endowment enormously. The market has been helpful, but so have our donors. We've also grown the building twice, we've exploded the collection – 85,000 object in 1995 and over 200,000 objects today – our budget in 1995 was $83 or $84 million and it's $185 million now. So I sweat bullets over that. That $1.75 billion endowment produces $74–75 million so we still have to find $110 million, so I worry every day. Do I think we're going to close tomorrow morning if we screw up? No. We have the resources not to do that, but do I think we can blow up over a reasonably short period of time? Absolutely. Absolutely. I do not believe that there's a tablet from Moses that says ‘Thou shalt survive all of this.’ So, no, I have not had a good night sleep in pretty close to 25 years.” –Glenn Lowry, Museum of Modern Art

“Our entire cultural sector exists on a foundation of very specific tax codes…” –Deana Haggag, Mellon Foundation

“Smaller cities are thinking about how do we become a place that people who could live anywhere want to live. And most regional economic development strategies have been about attracting a company not a person… The next wave will be ‘What can we do to get the people that companies want to hire to live here.’ And there’s very little that does that like investing in culture. –Pete Scantland, Orange Barrel Media

I want to make sure my opinion is clear on this topic: we should utilize all tools available to make our shipments more efficient which will ultimately reduce our institutional emissions. Few institutions have the resources to explore this topic the way that Hauser & Wirth has and we need to acknowledge that important contribution.

Your Art Here

Somewhere on this boat is a priceless antiquity.

My issues with shipping by sea ultimately come down to uncertainty. The uncertainty has several negative bi-products such as increased risk to the objects, increased complexity of planning, increased burden on staff, and no considerable reduction in cost.

Uncertainty places the burden of emission reduction on the collection, its objects, and its stewards and not on the users of the resources. Let me explain what I mean by that statement. Many professionals have reassured me that sea freight can safely transport works of art and that stories about containers abandoned at sea get vastly over-indexed. However, objects in transit for weeks instead of hours take on much more risk both in the crate and on the ground. Someone has to plan for this, monitor this, mitigate this. The objects have to endure this.

Uncertainty ultimately prevents scalability. The white paper demonstrates an increased burden the logistics place on those managing the shipments. More variables (time in transit, increased planning time, reefer containers, port accessibility, etc.) introduced into the shipping equation provide an increased workload for those involved in the shipping process. This creates uncertainty. The increased headache, more importantly, prevents adoption on a large scale (unless, of course, it simply becomes exponentially easier) to truly affect emissions at scale.

The answer is both?

Other key factors not sufficiently discussed in the conversation orbiting sea freight is the accessibility of a port and, consequently, the amount of terrestrial transportation required to get the objects to the boat. What if the point of origin or the final destination resides far from a port city? This can dramatically affect emissions, cost, and transit time. It is said, “Everything touches a truck.” Low emission, electric trucks and other ground transportation are the real silver bullet here. Let us find a way to make this happen.

Lastly, the biggest reason that sea freight will most likely not have a major impact on emissions in our sector is due to the lack of any real incentives besides “doing the right thing”. It costs about the same. It takes longer. It places more of a burden on staff. Why do it unless you have no other choice? One must have a true incentive, usually financial, to make a big impact.

The methods that I prefer to reduce emissions serendipitously also reduce costs. There is no better incentive than cost reduction. Additionally, these methods also place the burden of emission reduction on those who use the resources and not the objects themselves. This is what I have been calling the economic eclipse and what I believe our shipments should naturally strive for: lower cost, lower emissions, better object care. See some examples below and here:

• Ship less = lower shipping cost

• Less staff travel = less travel cost

• Longer exhibitions = less shipping

• Improve HVAC = lower cost

By the way, any insurer will tell you that most damage to objects occurs in transit, hence the concentration on shipping as a means to improve object care (and lower cost and lower emissions).

Other options that move the burden of emission reduction from the objects and collections managers to the user of fossil fuels:

• Charge for emissions and donate the money to emission-reducing causes

  • Add a small % to the sale of a work (see Marian Boesky Gallery’s Carbon Conscious Contribution)

  • Add a cost to your museum’s loan fee

  • Shippers can add this cost to their services (some do)

• Again, HVAC, is the biggest user of energy and producer of emissions

• Where is the discussion about renewable energy sources powering our buildings?

I have already written a lot about other options, but my point is the same in general. Sea freight is one tool in our toolbox but one that does not currently have the potential to make a big impact due to its increased uncertainty and ultimate inability to scale enough to change our habits. Further, we need to shift the burden of reducing the emissions from the objects to the users of the objects, and consequently, make the shipping/usage of collections more efficient and cost effective. Most of us who work with art and artifacts do so for our love of the objects, and for this reason, we should prioritize that which betters their care and preservation. Sea freight asks the professionals who manage those shipments to radically change existing protocols. Big changes in emissions requires big changes in practices without a doubt, but I believe we cannot achieve those cataclysmic changes without incredible incentives. We should also hold those utilizing the resources responsible for their usage.

I ultimately want to reiterate, that Hauser & Wirth and I have a common enemy and seek the same goals. They have actually tried it. They have put their own resources on the line for the cause. We must appreciate that they have done this. Further, I appreciate their reading of my previous article and hope that we can continue to push each other to improve our field.

The New York Times released an article last week about how the Duke University Nasher Museum of Art prompted ChatGPT to curate its latest show. The experiment predictably outraged a comment section intent on misunderstanding the experiment and thus proved the experiment’s worth.

Is this not always the case for new things? One valuable response, however, pointed to this New Yorker article written by a computer scientist that sits us down to explain the birds and the bees of A.I.

The curator of the future?

My interest, naturally, lies in the dataset used to curate the show. In other words, the algorithm bloodhounds the internet for traces of digitized collection information from cataloged objects relevant to the prompt entered into ChatGPT. In other words, the catalog information of the collection available online. In other words, the work of registrars and collections managers.

In thinking about the implications of this, I decided to appropriately ask AI to develop ideas about this topic (I did not edit a single word of the generated ideas). Of course, I had ideas of my own but the list that it compiled went deeper due to its more complete understanding of artificial intelligence (a.k.a. itself). I will look at each.

• Idea 1: Utilizing AI to digitize and catalog art and artifacts in museums, creating a comprehensive database for curating exhibitions.

  • Currently, AI uses the available data to curate these imperfect exhibitions. Soon, we will begin to document these objects in a way that anticipates its use by AI to curate shows.

• Idea 2: Developing AI algorithms that can analyze and categorize art and artifacts based on various criteria such as style, period, artist, and cultural significance.

  • On the surface, this already happens by registrars, but what if AI uses data already out in the world to do it for us? In other words, it can use already airborne images and information about Roman ceramics to suggest to the registrar cataloging the work that not only is this a Roman vase but it likely originates from x period. Similarly, it can suggest a work derives from the brush of Monet from x period.

• Idea 3: Implementing AI-powered image recognition technology to identify and categorize art and artifacts based on visual features.

  • Expanding upon the previous idea, image recognition will anticipate the collections of objects to input. Take the case of the article discussed last week of the British Museum and their 4 million uncatalogued objects that posed a security risk. Perhaps a large portion of the AI could create basic entries for those objects. Yes, they would require and initial photograph and further review and refinement by a human, but they would get catalogued.

• Idea 4: Creating AI algorithms that can automatically generate exhibit themes and connections between different artworks and artifacts based on their cataloged information.

  • To riff on a previous idea, not only will we catalog in a way that encourages AI use, we will artfully rewrite algorithms to more eruditely interact with the data to produce even more interesting results. I will go one step further and suggest that future curators role will requiring an expertise with the algorithm, prompts, and and overall ability to interact with the data in new and interesting ways.

• Idea 5: Using AI to analyze visitor data and feedback to better understand their preferences and interests, and tailoring exhibitions accordingly.

  • This idea does not derive from collections management work nor does it inspire must of a collections response beyond prioritizing work on or with the most popular or sought after objects.

• Idea 6: Employing AI to assist curators in identifying gaps or missing pieces in the museum's collection and suggesting potential acquisitions or loans.

  • This is an interesting idea. Again, it will require a level of nuanced skill with the technology in order to interact with the objects and data in interesting ways. The interpretation of existing collections will generate huge amounts of useful information.

• Idea 7: Developing AI systems that can analyze historical and cultural contexts to provide deeper insights into the significance and interpretation of exhibited art and artifacts.

  • See above regarding the curator’s abilities to plug into the matrix of information. We will learn so much about ourselves through forced interpretations and juxtapositions we could not have conceived on our own.

• Idea 8: Utilizing AI-powered natural language processing to generate informative and engaging descriptions for each artwork or artifact in an exhibition.

  • Not only will AI interact with factual data, but it will also smoke the cigarette of interactive text and exhale wild interpretations of objects from the lungs of its algorithms.

• Idea 9: Integrating AI chatbots or virtual guides that can interact with visitors, providing additional information and answering questions about the artworks and artifacts.

  • The public will have easy access to all of the information compiled, explained, interpreted, and anticipated from the above interactions.

• Idea 10: Using AI algorithms to analyze social media and online platforms to identify emerging trends and artists, informing curators' decisions for future exhibitions.

  • Lifting the hatch on the controlled space of the museum data bomb shelter, the river of factual and interpreted institutional object data will reach the ocean of internet text, ideas, and thought which will inspire AI to infinitely build and rebuild ideas with Legos of thought.

The scale of this fraudulent activity astounds and rarely reaches this level without multiple failures by multiple people along the way. I refer to repatriation issues as well as the stolen objects. You have to admire the irony of the internal plundering of a museum housing so much plunder. A natural response if you represent a country seeking the repatriation of objects is, “The British Museum cannot safely house its collection.” Thus, it can clearly no longer legitimately argue that it can more safely harbor these objects than, say, Greece or Nigeria for example.

History’s Hottest Property

The Parthenon marbles housed at the British Museum represent the most contested examples of cultural patrimony in the world.

The scale of the story consequently commands the attention of the majority of media, but I want to concentrate on the collections management angle of the story, however, which commands the spotlight in this case of this chronic theft. This Artnet News article about the case extensively and uniquely discusses the cataloging issues.

That perhaps half of the British Museum’s mammoth collection of some 8 million objects was never fully catalogued has become a matter of keen public interest.

This is not a problem unique to the British Museum, and understandably, the amount of resources it takes to document millions of objects is truly unfathomable. Of course, one could also retort that they should not acquire them if they cannot properly document and house them.

Many of my colleagues and myself know that institutions globally simply cannot catalog the millions of objects lying fallow in warehouses around the world, but I will go further and ask even harder questions. What of those objects merits embalming in a museum?

From the same Artnet article.

“If it takes just one hour to identify, handle, photograph, and digitize a collection piece for cataloguing, and you have 8 million pieces, it would take a team of four 685 years to complete the catalogue if they work non-stop, eight hours a days, seven days per week,”

It’s a Steal!

Media reports identify objects allegedly stolen from British Museum and posted on eBay.

The items include a piece of Roman jewellery—reportedly worth between £25,000 and £50,000—being offered with a minimum price of £40

Source: The Art Newspaper

Those of us who spend time with collections (not just in museums) know that several pieces will never wake from hibernation. While candidates for deaccessioning, removing objects could create a major image problem and also requires a large amount of work for staff. Safely storing and housing these objects similarly requires massive amounts of resources and represents a safety risk as illustrated by the British Museum.

To be clear, we do not resolve this problem (and it is a problem). With every digit of pi that we can recite, we make a more precise number, but we never recite them all. In the case of the British Museum, their situation may have reached the event horizon where they can take a radical step in how they manage their collection which could influence the rest of the world. Could their leadership have the courage to do this? Who will take on this job-portunity?

On an almost weekly basis, we hear a new story about objects returning to their country or culture of origin. Fantastic, right? On the one hand, like dropping a stone down a deep, black well, we wait for the splash which seems to never arrive. Likewise, the amount of plundering by colonial powers that occurred throughout history appears similarly profound and endless. On the other, does the steady return also show that institutions around the world take seriously the situation and actively seek to return objects?

“Because of their artistic excellence and the violence of their taking, the Benin bronzes have come to symbolize the colonial repatriation movement…”

From the IFAR Journal, Volume 21, No. 3/4, 2022/23

Before reading this article, my thesis on the status of repatriation crudely orbited around “we’re currently on the right track”. This summary, however, peaks around a corner and shows the vast extent of the mountain we have yet to climb. It exposes to me at least the galactic scale of plunder that radiates around the world’s museums and, in my opinion, begs us to question the role of museums themselves. If they exist to inspire and educate us, what feeds the museum itself? Is the museum inherently problematic? What is the ideal, ethical museum?

If I lead an encyclopedic museum with potentially looted objects, I would strive for thorough due diligence of potentially problematic objects and return what I could. You must, however, establish a goal and perhaps even revise your mission in order to accommodate such a potential upheaval in the scope of a collection. Will these types of museums evolve into something completely different in 10 or 20 years? Do we re-conceptualize the entire nature of the institution?

May screened some big episodes this month in the ongoing drama that composes the management of cultural patrimony. The story of the Met’s mummy repatriation, Warhol and Prince “collaboration”, and an art fraud Ponzi scheme.

Podcasts Series on Repatriation

The Freakonomics Radio podcast delves into a 3-part series on repatriation called “Stealing Art Is Easy. Giving It Back Is Hard.” which includes interviews with many of the key players working in the field.

And, because I always have to include law-related items…. Andy Warhol continues to provoke seismic polarization and divisive polemic decades after his death. The Supreme Court of the United States decided to part the choppy intellectual property waters and sided against the Andy Warhol Foundation in a case regarding the use of Lynn Goldsmith’s photo of Prince.

I tried to come to my own conclusion on this and found it complicated to unpack. The case will tsunami intellectual property law and potentially establish a historic precedent for fair use cases. My investigation sourced some interesting opinions and analysis beyond basic reporting on the case but never really offered me a clear-cut opinion.

From Scotus Blog, Independent News and Analysis which focuses on the majority opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Sotomayor’s opinion characterizes the “fair use” defense as a central part of the copyright law’s “balancing act between creativity and availability.” For her, the first factor, the “character” of the later use, “relates to the problem of substitution,” and thus does not protect the later “use of an original work to achieve a purpose that is the same as, or highly similar to, that of the original work.” When the later work will “substitute for” or “supplant” the original work, as here, that factor cuts against the fairness of the later use.

This National Review take focuses on the vehemently dissenting Justice Elena Kagan’s opinion.

For it is not just that the majority does not realize how much Warhol added; it is that the majority does not care. In adopting that posture of indifference, the majority does something novel (though in law, unlike in art, it is rarely a good thing to be transformative).

Separately…

The majority holds that because Warhol licensed his work to a magazine—as Goldsmith sometimes also did—the first factor goes against him. It does not matter how different the Warhol is from the original photo—how much “new expression, meaning, or message” he added. It does not matter that the silkscreen and the photo do not have the same aesthetic characteristics and do not convey the same meaning. It does not matter that because of those dissimilarities, the magazine publisher did not view the one as a substitute for the other. All that matters is that Warhol and the publisher entered into a licensing transaction, similar to one Goldsmith might have done. Because the artist had such a commercial purpose, all the creativity in the world could not save him.

The significance of the case stems from the fact that the majority opinion focused not on the transformative nature of Warhol’s work but on the fact that he licensed the image.

But in that case, there goes the basic notion behind appropriation art — that appropriation works because it does so little to alter its source.

This latter quote originates in the New York Times opinion questioning if the decision will hurt artists. It certainly leans toward the dissenting argument, and I do too. The reason is that Kagan’s written retort is inspired and even exciting prose. She dunks on her colleagues – with no interest in political affiliation – in favor of artistic practice.

More Good Kagan quotes:

“He reframed and reformulated—in a word, transformed—images created first by others. Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo boxes. Photos of celebrity icons: Marilyn, Elvis, Jackie, Liz—and, as most relevant here, Prince. That’s how Warhol earned his conspicuous place in every college’s Art History 101,” Kagan wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts. 

“It is not just that the majority does not realize how much Warhol added; it is that the majority does not care,” Kagan wrote.

The Art Newspaper address the fair use issue with both Warhol and Richard Prince in their “The Week in Art” podcast episode.

Lastly, prominent art advisor Lisa Schiff seems to have perfectly played her part in maintaining mainstream stereotypes of art world gluttony, corruption, and dishonestly and closed her New York firm following accusations of running a Ponzi scheme that fueled her lavish lifestyle.

Read an article about it here (many others confetti the internet).

What interests me more is how she would have run the Ponzi Scheme assuming the accusations play out given that at some point you have to provide the physical works of art. This Artnet article outlines the basics.

1. She takes client money to purchase a work (checks made out to her firm)

2. She engages the seller (mostly galleries it seems) to purchase

3. She does not pay them or only partially pays them

4. She uses the clients’ money to partially pay for other client purchases and otherwise roll like a celebrity

5. She owes money to many galleries

6. She keeps living the dream

Is it smart or dumb? Whatever the case, it makes for enthralling summer reading and provides us with a common villain at whom we point our fingers. Like Bernie Madoff, too, the number of prominent folks who simply trusted Schiff with their money and allowed her to control their collections astounds. It also shows the power of the work in that people will give up so much in order to get the pieces by way of gatekeepers such as Schiff. Very interesting.

Not an Option

This is from the HBO series Treme. Fedex is definitely better than this option.

Of course, we never want to subject high-value objects to the rigors of apathetic handling by FedEx, DHL, UPS, etc. but we can find ourselves cornered by lack of availability of options due to time sensitivity or geography or any number of reasons that eliminate a traditional art shipper as an option. Galleries and other smaller institutions may also do so for budgetary reasons or, frankly, because it more efficiently gets the job done and distributes its wares to every nook and cranny of the globe.

No one expects that the works will receive 5-star treatment (in fact, we assume the opposite), but we triple the amount of bubble wrap, use double-wall cardboard, insure it, blanket it with “fragile” stickers, and ship it overnight hoping to eliminate extra handling in order to feel slightly more confident of undamaged travel. Innumerable issues may arise, but mostly it works out in our favor. Thus, we keep guiltily doing it.

FedEx Knows Our Secret

FedEx even provides instructions on how to pack and ship art. You do not have to tell anyone.

As a result, I think that we should consider responsible use of FedEx a valuable tool in our arsenal and acknowledge publicly that we cannot live without it. I have worked on shipments from remote locations where the only way to get the piece out was through DHL. Shuttle schedules can also shift seasonally and relegate certain regions to the sidelines but for these services.

Obviously, besides timing, cost, too, will dictate the use. At a client’s request, I have shipped small, but valuable objects through the service because the use of an art shipper arriving in a box truck and dropping an apple-sized box in a c-bin, cross-docking at a nearby warehouse overnight, to leave the next day on a shuttle seemed just as clumsy as Fedex but much slower and more expensive.

We have to acknowledge how well these global shipping services function. I can send something overnight from New York to Ushuaia and it arrives before 10am with customs managed and the package tracked the entire way. That is basically teleportation! I do not expect museums to habitually teleport objects but certainly galleries will not meet all of their clients’ expectations without this sorcery.

Again, I do not advocate for viral use of this practice but realize that it functions primarily as a necessary option. We can build mostly FedEx-proof boxes, expect a mishandled transit, and meet our deadlines as a result. It all depends on the objects and the circumstance, but we all know that we will check that tracking number at 10am tomorrow.

Salt-N-Pepa, “Let’s Talk About Sex” Official music video.

The SML Art Market Salary Report, 2022

Sophie Macpherson Ltd is a global art market recruiting firm with offices in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Their annual salary report contributes to the wider conversations around pay transparency based on data from their own placements. Note that the report does not contain information on museums. Of course, the American Alliance of Museums has one from 2017 that you can purchase and the Association of Art Museum Directors has one.

You can also hear their managing director, Rosie Allan, speak about the report here on the ArtTactic podcast.

The report lands in a climate of continued labor disputes, a larger return to pre-pandemic levels of work, and the New York wage transparency law requiring all job posts to contain a reasonable salary range.

I want to drop a pin on a couple of things.

The US employment market is growing, with increased demand for exceptional talent beyond New York. A 200% increase in US searches managed by SML outside of New York speaks to a market currently going from strength to strength. Los Angeles stands out as a particular area of focus.

I bring from this a sense that one can make a good living in the area, especially in the United States; however the distribution of the money varies wildly. For example, to receive better pay, one might have to move to the commercial side.

Deaccessioning at the Whitney?

Should we care? Should we care because it is a work by Edward Hopper? Is this only a headline because it is a major museum selling work by major artists?

Swiss Customs Duties for Works of Art?

The Swiss government asked a number of art museums to exhibit their tax-exempt works of art imported from abroad or risk paying tax on them. Or did they?

They quickly changed course because…it is Switzerland! The land of tax-free anonymity.

“So if a museum bought a Picasso painting in France in 1960 for 100,000 francs that is worth 10 million francs today, the museum would have to pay 770,000 francs at the current tax rate of 7.7 percent. No Swiss art institution can afford that.”

On the other hand…

However, she noted, “the article doesn’t say whether the customs administration will take back the orders that they sent the different museums. Maybe they’re just in the process of clarifying what exactly is required from the museums. It simply mentions the museums are allowed to store art, so I think there is still the issue as to what exactly that entails.”

I have never attended the pre-pandemic iterations and thus cannot compare this one to the past. I first observed that they did not define art in a practical sense. It assumed we know. Semantic criticism is trivial but becomes important when using data to assess the state of the market. Do antiquities sold by dealers and auctions fall into this category?

The second, considerably more important observation, is that the sponsors were the primary presenters and thusly controlled the topics of conversation. It felt like sponsoring the conference delivered the company a panel in which to directly advertise their services. In addition, I think that every panel had sponsors on it. I fear the ramifications offer a contorted conversation into the specializations of the companies and not necessarily those of the field. I will get into more of this as we go.

Topics:

• Sustainability

• Provenance Research

• Art Lending

• Cyber Security

• Hiring & Employment

• Art & Technology

One sponsor, Convelio, gave brief presentations between panels advertising the company. The blatant advertising took some getting used to and forced me to filter the content through a scrim of financial motives.

No doubt, however, that sustainability headlined the conference as the first panel and all of the second day’s workshops addressed aspects of the subject.

Galleries Commit and the Gallery Climate Coalition again took center stage on the topic. I have seen them speak at least 3 other times and do not know if other groups do not exist or if they simply are the only ones doing the hard work in this area. In my opinion they have done great things, but as with most of the topics, they needed consult a token collections manager.

Shipping is the topic that dominates this discussion and the Robin to shipping’s Batman is sea freight. The bat signal again illuminated Gotham and drew the topic out. This time, with a key figure from Crozier on the panel, they began pushing the topic. I have written previously, about why we should not avidly pursue the solution; however, Crozier, along with Christie’s, has invested in a world-wide route and coincidentally was present on the panel discuss it. From what I know, they are the only shipper that seems ok with the format based on my conversations with people. And, the insurers…

However, Crozier and I both agree on the use of data to make decisions and inform change. In this case, they use data to relieve insurers’ concerns about the risks of sea freight.

Liz Bloomfield from Marianne Boesky Gallery explained how they charge $35 per purchase to go toward the Art to Acres organization. This is a great solution that I wished for a few years ago in the form of a percentage on a purchase. Either way, you shift the burden of sustainability from the objects (sea freight) to the usage of the object and, thus, to those who can more likely afford it.

The panel on art lending did not offer anything new or radical. It exists, and more and more banks do it. However, one should consider the motives of the institution lending to you and if you want to allow them access to your background and your collection.

Some stats:

• Generational shift: Millennials and Gen-Xers represent the majority of loans

• Millennials represent 41% of buyers in the art market

• Continued diversification of buyers and the types of works they buy

The post-lunch coffee did not wake up attendees as well as the cyber security panel. Some notes.

• Primarily money and trade secrets sought

• Data is a means to an end

• The pinnacle of hacking is an administrator’s credentials

• Users must minimize access to data. Access on a need to know basis.

• Users are conduit to someone else

• Avoid password reuse. Use a cloud password manager like Dashlane or CyberFox

• Phishing emails remain the biggest problem

• Get to know your vendors and do not give them access to your data

• Dedicated IT services preferred if possible

• People inside your email inbox is one of the biggest threats

• Archive email. Do not store years’ worth of data in email form

• Do not email passwords

• Train employees about security best practices

• Most attacks occur on long weekends

• Get cyber insurance

• Different passwords

• Use two-factor authentication whenever possible

• Be aware of what information you expose

• Make cyber attack emergency plans

• Minimum actions include:

  • Cloud hosted services like email

  • Do NOT mix work and personal data (different computers for example)

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The last two panels, hiring and art and technology, did not resonate as much with me and will not squat prominently in the lines of this text.

Suffice to say, that hiring around the world continues to make headlines. As one panelist put it (paraphrasing), following on the heels of the “Great Resignation”, we have entered the era of the “Great Negotiation”. Exemplifying that trend, salaries in the United States have overall risen while in the United Kingdom they have remained much the same. Side note, Los Angeles exhibits one of the largest areas of growth in hiring.

Panelists (mostly the attorney Ruofei Xiang) emphasized the importance of documentation such as employee handbooks as a key part of establishing expectations between employer and employee amidst such prescient issues as DEIA, labor disputes, and harassment complaints. Documentation changes with each state.

I asked about differentiating between contractors and employees in the wake of the laws in California protecting independent contractors. Independent contractors have a fair amount of freedom in how they go about their work and a company cannot impose a company-wide standard on them. On the other hand, employees work under company standards using company tools.

The panel lastly reiterated the importance of mentorship, internships, and competitive entry-level salaries in the face of talent acquisition and employee retention.

The final panel of the day, art and technology, felt more like publicity than a detailed discussion about technologies transforming the sector. Two of the three panelists, Artsy and Convelio, use technology to offer their services – a marketplace and shipping respectively – but do not make new technology that transform how we work. Artlogic, conversely, does develop platforms to help clients achieve new, aspirational goals. In the end, they had to have a debate if they were tech platforms at all. Telling. Regardless, I wanted more tech, more transformation, more blockchain, more AI, more DAOs.

Day two provided more in-depth discussion of climate and sustainability issues. I found it mostly repetitive but did like the discussion about climate control and HVAC, to me a vastly more important issue than shipping because, again, it does not stress objects in order to lower fossil fuel emissions. See our HVAC webinar here.

Heath Lowndes of the Gallery Climate Coalition did an interesting tutorial about their Carbon Calculator which I found useful. It immediately made me wish someone would embed this calculator in our collections databases so that entering shipping information about a piece automatically calculated its emissions. I will pitch this to them.

The conference was overall useful and offered plenty of time for networking as well. I really enjoyed the fact that it focused on business because I advocate for market-based solutions to many of these problems. I think that financial incentives –which abound – will more rapidly beget change. I did, however, wish for a greater recognition of collections management as a source of value and revenue. My bias speaks here, but I do believe it is objectively true that many of these issues maintain collections management at their shoulder-chipped core, and could be more quickly solved if they brought us in to the conversation earlier. As a result of the conference, I aim to push for more representation outside of our own professional silos.

How do you not know who owns the Van Gogh? Ask the person who keeps the records (if there is one). Standing downwind, this story about the dispute in ownership of a Van Gogh painting loaned to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) reeks of collectors who do not hire proper managers of their collection.

Who’s the collections manager?

When you have a trained collections manager, you always know who owns your multi-million dollar works of art. Just sayin’.

Repatriation has surged into normalization in the last several years. While we quickly denounce the lack of transparency or the apparently lethargic pace of returning objects to their countries of origin. However, should we not praise institutions for doing the work to return them?

Some will pessimistically declare that museums benefited from these stolen objects for years or decades prior to their return and do not deserve positive attention for returning objects that never belonged to them in the first place. However, were I a museum director, I would expect a significant amount of due diligence about the origins of the objects prior to returning. These efforts require malnourished museums to divert large amounts of resources from other important projects. That they do it seems noteworthy.

Repatriation

The Art Newspaper reports no less than 7 articles about repatriated objects. Artnet News also has several.

Despite the number of articles, repatriation does not headline the periodicals which suggests to me a normalization of the exercise.

All this repatriation talk mandates me to share this sinister Instagram post.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fake News Network (@fakenewsnetwork)

Lastly, I just randomly learned about that in the first half of the 20th Century, art was an event in the Olympic Games. This podcast explains the history behind what seems “ridiculous” today.

We discuss:

• The problems with our current systems

• Short and long-term options and solutions

• Ways to approach your administration to make the changes

The full conversation with Greg Stephens

As professionals charged with protecting art and artifact collections, we have to shepherd the flock away from the wolves. The threats resulting from the transportation of collections, as any insurer will tell you, far outnumber any other threat, yet we burden ourselves with that risk for the sake of access and education.

In other words, take the principle responsibility of reducing collection emissions off the already threatened collection itself. Do not add more risk by extending travel times by sea or compromising the quality of packing for the sake of less substantial greenhouse gas reductions. We need to track and hunt the biggest game: emissions from our buildings in the form of electricity used to climatize spaces powered by non-renewable energy sources.

Collections do not get smaller. The number of objects deemed valuable enough to safeguard only increases with the creation of new works of art, the discovery or more ancient relics, or the reinterpretations of past that lead us to value our world differently. Energy usage by buildings already outweighs other sources and will only grow.

What can we do to reduce energy use by our HVAC systems? I have organized a webinar on the topic with Greg Stephens, Professional Engineer (PE) and President of Mussett Nicholas Associates, an architecture firm specializing in spaces requiring specialized environments, to explain the full range of possibilities.

Join me on Friday, March 24, at 1pm EST

RSVP to my email jtr@jtrobinette.com to receive the Zoom link.

A little over a week ago, I attended a prescient event in New York hosted by the Responsible Art Market Initiative which presented panels on two of the major topics of our time: NFTs and Sustainability in the stark white, overhung walls of the below ground Phillips auction house building on Park Avenue.

The NFT panel piqued my interest because it shows a continued interest and relevance to the topic that a few months ago saw a market collapse and presumed ending of the “fad”. This panel suggests they still have a role to play. That said, I have spoken enough about NFTs (for more about NFTs, go here) and will not retrace those footsteps.

On the other hand, the distinguished panelists made some very important points on the topic of sustainability. Upon later reflection, however, I came to realize that what they described ultimately lack teeth because their solutions lack incentives. This explains why, despite years of discussion about the topic, years of feeling bad about about disposing an exhibition’s worth of crates after one use, years of diamond-medallion-air-miled administrators, years of unnecessary couriers, and years of 70 degrees/50% relative humidity nothing has changed.

I did not make the rules, but here we are.

The presenters included Laura Lupton, an art and climate consultant and co-founder of Galleries Commit, Nicole Bouchard Tejeiro, a senior director at Crozier Fine Arts, and Sophie Scheerlinck, former CEO of the TEFAF art fair and current COO of the Independent Art Fair. Nanne Dekking, the CEO and founder of Artory moderated the discussion. All distinguished in their accomplishments in the field.

I truly appreciate a few key points that were made. First, Ms. Bouchard Tejeiro brought up the “low hanging fruit” that is the vast use of resources deployed to maintain high climate standards. I fully agree as many believe the energy generated to maintain those standards actually emits the most greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

Additionally, Ms. Lupton’s impressive record advocating for sustainability initiatives through her various organizations has connected many related institutions that collectively offer resources about art and climate initiatives. She and her related organizations are primary resources on sustainability and the art world.

Ms. Scheerlinck, pointed out the difficulty of running art fairs in sustainable ways and critically pointed out that operating in ways that cause less environmental damage often costs more. She used an example of cleaning, storing, and reusing the carpet laid for the fair which literally comes at greater expense than disposing and replacing the carpet during the next iteration.

This point importantly describes why so little has changed on a scale that causes a significant impact. If we rely on institutions to merely “do the right thing”, nothing will change – and it has not to date – at the necessary scale to achieve the desired result, fewer emissions, because it actually costs more to do the right thing.

I will keep repeating that we can have an “economic eclipse” where sustainability, economics, and collections care align for improved practices. Options like the oft-proposed-still-fossil-fuel-dependent sea freight solution which is so wildly impractical (days or weeks at sea) and risky (ask any insurance underwriter what they think of sea freight) that we should discourage it for all but the most necessary shipments. Jeopardizing the care of the object should not be the first option for reducing fossil fuel emissions in other words. Why put the burden of reducing emissions on the objects in the collection we swear to protect?

I would like to see calls for renewable energy sources for institutions, less staff travel, and longer exhibitions in these discussions (to name but a few) because they benefit the objects as well as the environment and the bottom line. If we do not offer incentives beyond “it is the right thing to do”, we will not make a dent in the problem. Positively speaking, we have many options that can help on three different fronts.

In my Cognitive Dissonance series, Part 1 and Part 2, I offer many more economic eclipse options that allow us to leverage object demand for loans to achieve more sustainable practices. Use your loan contract to make demands, for example. Use higher loan fees to invest in sustainability initiatives. Add a sustainability charge to the sale of your works in your gallery that goes toward legitimate offsets, like that which Galleries Commit features on its website, for all the art fairs you attend. In fact, during the presentation, they pointed out that the majority of collectors (and NOT dealers) felt that the issue of sustainability mattered significantly. Regardless, these are but a few quick changes that you can implement now that do not require upending the entire industry as we know it. Money defeats feeling good about yourself every time; therefore, you should use that to your advantage.

The program ended with my hand still in the air ready to pose some of these questions to the panel; therefore, I will distill my point here: whether we choose to act for financial or for moral reasons, we need to create the right incentives to achieve the desired effect. I continue to beg everyone to sing from the economic eclipse hymn sheet because no one else has offered a win-win-win situation.

Archaeologically, we begin with a no-less-than-stunning claim made by John Reeves, a miner from Fairbanks, Alaska, on the Joe Rogan Experience that tons of unwanted mammoth fossils were dumped into the East River in New York 80 years ago. Consequently, now people are diving there in search of mammoth bones.

“We’re Boners following our ancestors through the ice age.”

Mr. Rogan invited Mr. Reeves to the show because he regularly collects fossilized bones on his property and documents them through his Instagram account.

This Anchorage Daily News article more interestingly recounts the story and expands upon both Mr. Reeves’ and the story’s exposition and credibility.

To find his specimens, Reeves sprays water at ledges of earth, and the bones break free from the permafrost and muck, he said. Reeves said he’s collected around a quarter-million fossils over about 15 years.

And, yes, they have begun making a movie about this guy and his pursuits.

John Reeves on the Joe Rogan Experience claims that thousands of bones, unwanted by the Museum of Natural History, were dumped into the East River in New York.

Another recent discovery for me, though not necessarily one for the museum, a collection of classical music works by Texas composer Justin Sherburn and his wife Sara Nelson and their Austin, Texas, group Montopolis inspired by waiting on hold to collect unemployment funds during the height of the pandemic.

Get the back story from Texas Monthly here about these artists artist-ing their way through an existentially challenging time. The story even spread beyond the region and attracted national attention through NPR. And, naturally, to experience the music in its natural environment, call this number 512-559-4739.

Listen to and buy the album below and directly help artists support themselves.

Hold Music

Waiting on Hold to Claim Unemployment Just Got a Little Less Hellish, Thanks to an Austin Band

In other feats of ingenuity immensely representative of our time, NFTs have staked a elephantine flag in museum territory defying recent critics declaring them a fad whose time has passed. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has recently received a gift of 22 NFTs and generative works of art.

“As one of the first museums to support artists’ experimentation with technology, it’s fitting that LACMA would receive the first museum collection of blockchain art.” Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director,

LACMA Acquires Blockchain Art

Dmitri Cherniak, Ringers #962, 2021, .JPG delivered as an NFT, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, promised gift of The Cozomo de' Medici Collection,

The museum has already devoted a lot of intellectual real estate to the topic including this 7-part series on NFTs and the Museum from 2021.

With this acquisition along with the near-simultaneous acquisition by the Centre Pompidou.

With this new acquisition, the idea is not so much to focus on the pop culture phenomenon of “collectibles” (collections of images sold by NFT, such as “Bored Apes” or “CryptoPunks”) as to explore the most daring uses of this technology in order to engage, according to Marcella Lista and Philippe Bettinelli

Lastly, I want to conclude with some law as I love a debate with no clear answer.

This ongoing battle between the artist, Sam Kerson, and a faction at the Vermont Law and Graduate School over murals commissioned and painted by the artist 30 years ago aiming to depict the brutality of slavery and Vermont’s role in the Underground Railroad. This case interests me because both sides literally want to make the same point: slavery was unconscionably horrendous and seeded seemingly insurmountable consequences.

"I don't quite understand how an institution composed of attorneys and law professors could have got themselves in this pickle." Chief Judge Geoffrey Crawford

The polemic takes root in the depiction of black people, according to critics, in stereotypical ways, the intent to consequently remove the murals, and the artist’s claim that per law, specifically the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, the school cannot cover or destroy them.

You can see and read about the works in far more detail in the New York Times here as well as in Seven Days, a local Vermont paper.

The case forces an important self-reflection beyond simplistic “good” versus “bad” tropes, but the depictions risk perpetuating that which they criticize. In other words, the issue is not slavery at all, but about representation and its protection by law.

I will not claim to study forgeries but do find the subject super interesting from a true crime perspective. In many ways, the non-fiction of it all resonates more than fiction itself. I also feel that professionals who work closely with precious objects could go Walter White and “professionally” try to use their knowledge to replicate masters or masterpieces.

In many ways, we also romanticize the forger with so many of these stories of their subversion like a self-righteous hacker proving a point against a major corporation or government. I am a sucker for a plot that distorts or even destroys the line between “good” and “bad”.

In essence, the autopsy of the fake reveals an infection of subplots and motives that will rubberneck any curious observer. The sheer subjectivity of the appreciation and attribution of these objects makes it perfect for omniscient gawking.

“It doesn’t stop it being a Freud just because it’s not good”

From the New Yorker article “The Case of the Disputed Lucian Freud”

This disputed Freud story has it all: science, the passionate artist trope, a collector desperate to authenticate his purchase, and all the subjectivity we have grown to love about the topic.

“Wolfgang's paintings had found their way onto auction blocks and into private collections, including that of actor Steve Martin.”

From the CNN article “The husband-and-wife forgers who fooled the art market — and made millions”

On the other hand, the Beltracchi case is the parasite we love to romanticize. The over-confident couple thriving in the lack of attribution objectivity of the field for their own gain. Deliberately reconstructing and successfully selling their fakes for big money. Yes, there are movies – several.

One of the most elevated and notorious forgers of our time, Mark Landis, actually donated his copies to museums for years suggesting that he merely wanted the attention.

“He messed with the wrong registrar.”

Matthew C. Leininger, the registrar whose work uncovering the trail of Mark Landis fakes forms the basis for the documentary about him.

Registrar, Matthew C. Leininger of the Cinncinati Art Museum, followed the breadcrumbs of fakes produced by Landis’ hand through the more than 40 museums in which he donated them and eventually became the subject of the documentary Art and Craft.

The title alone elevates Landis’ status from a forger to a craftsman. Multiple exhibitions validate his his technique and suggest an acceptance of his skills as a form of art. Even just typing “Mark Landis art” into a search yields plenty of results like “Mark Landis artist” before “Mark Landis art forger”. His reputation as an artist seems to rest alongside that of a forger. Perhaps this is the manifestation of the Jorge Luis Borges story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”.

After 165 years, remaining open during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, the Knoedler Gallery sunsets after a highly-publicized scandal involving forgeries of many of the great 20th Century modern masters and the juiciest context and story imaginable. This Vanity Fair article brilliantly recounts it all.

“…the modest-size painting (15 inches by 281 1/2 inches) was found to contain yellow paint pigments not commercially available until about 1970.”

From the Vanity Fair article “A Question of Provenance”.

And, naturally, a movie places faces with the names.

Finally, The Fälscher Museum or “Fakes Museum” in Vienna, solidifies the reputations of many notorious pieces. By canonizing fakes in an institution, do we make them as interesting as an original? We admire their technique and the courage to use it in such a way. However, does it actually justify the act if we make movies about them, write articles about them, and place them in a museum? Maybe, but at least there are plenty of registrars to get to trace the fakes.

Fake it ‘Til You Make It.

A fake Rembrandt from the Fälscher Museum in Vienna houses, which shows only forgeries.

As the International Council of Museums (ICOM) says (and I paraphrase), the attacks on art and cultural heritage in the name of climate activism show the immense value of these objects to the world. The attacks finally attracted the attention of the public outside of the cultural heritage community. How many of you heard of #JustStopOil before these attacks?

Any insurer will tell you that most damage to cultural heritage objects occurs in transit, yet we continue to ship them to museums around the world at great risk because we feel a duty to education and accessibility (politics and PR play a role as well). So, how concerned should we be about art as the subject of these relatively rare protests? Are they, in fact, a continuation of the mission of our institutions?

At the end of the day, when do prioritize the bigger picture over the immediate concerns over the object? What if these pieces are doing what they are supposed to be doing: culture as an harbinger of societal change.

By reproducing this video and related videos, we do exactly what the activists want: publicize their message.

Today, of course, it’s impossible to miss how the earlier boundary between activism and art has blurred. While earlier artists took their skills and energies into, say, political activism or direct social action, or protested against the privileged and exclusionary nature of the gallery and museum, now those distinctions – between aesthetic and political worlds – have become porous.

This quote from the ArtReview review of the history of art as activism highlights the evolution of the practice and

Louisa Buck on the the Week in Art offers a more sympathetic view to the cause.

I take great care to take an objective view to the situation and see complexity. In fact, we should acknowledge how in most of these protests, those involved knew exactly what they were doing and made efforts to not damage works or involved only glazed works.

More interestingly to me, by using iconic pieces in the protests, they placed the greater, possibly non-museum-going public in a position to realize that they value these objects.

Of course, I do not want to suggest that we should promote the use of cultural patrimony in protest at great risk to their well being. I only suggest we revel in the nuance and seek greater understanding on a case-by-case basis (and make sure your insurance policy covers this type of damage). That said, if we believe what former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Thomas Hoving, claimed in his 1997 book False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes that over 40 percent of works in museums are fakes, then there is a nearly 1 in 2 chance that it is not real anyway.