The Green Flood: Private Equity Infultrates the Arts

The arts have no natural resistance to the current outbreak of private equity. Is this a case of big money taking over or will collections preservation finally getting the resources it always wanted?

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.”