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| Feature |
Taming Unwieldy Collections
Julie Connelly
06/01/2005
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The best way
to ensure a smooth claims process, should disaster strike, is to have your goods
appraised frequently and to have them cataloged. “I used to say that you should
have your collection appraised every three years, but for some pieces the market
is so volatile that they should be done more often,” appraiser Rosenberg says.
That could mean every year or two in a runaway market. Appraisers can charge as
much as $400 an hour. The Appraisers Association of America runs a certification
program and can recommend qualified professionals.
Cataloging is a task that gives some collectors a great deal of pleasure;
others hire curators to handle it. The Bells have painstakingly itemized 5,500
of their pieces by hand on index cards in small file drawers. There are
notations on each card describing the item, when and where they bought it and
what they paid, as well as close-up photos of most of their pieces showing their
function. At the other end of the spectrum is Shane, who bought his first
computer eight years ago to gain control of his expanding collection. He uses
antiques management software created by Artsystems to keep track of his works.
“I’ve fallen behind in my record keeping,” he admits. “I’ve got a four-month
backlog, but I’m picky about putting things in;
I want to do it the right
way.”
Software tools like Shane’s permit collectors, or their curators,
to enter descriptions of the works, such as any framing, the price paid, the
gallery they were purchased from, condition reports, appraisals, provenance, the
location of the pieces, biographical information about the artist or maker,
information about insurance, photographs and so on. “Value is built on
information about the piece,” explains Doug Milford, a partner at New York-based
Artsystems. Should the unthinkable happen, the records will provide every piece
of information a collector needs to do battle with the insurance company. In
fact, many fine-arts insurers offer such systems themselves.
Managing a
collection that appreciates is admittedly a problem that many would love to
have. But sometimes the added work can cause the objects themselves to lose
their enchantment. When this happens, “the nitty-gritty of maintenance becomes a
pain in the neck,” says Robert Barron, who in March sold his collection of 65
Song dynasty ceramic pieces at Christie’s in New York. Barron, a retired
neurologist who lives in New Orleans, had been collecting Song pottery for more
than 40 years when the New Orleans Museum of Art decided to mount an exhibition
of his pots in 2000. He visited the show nearly every day until it went
traveling to four other museums around the country. “I didn’t see my pots again
for a year and a half,” he recalls. “When they came back to New Orleans, I found
that I’d lost interest.”
Barron had stored his ceramics, each in its own
fitted box, in a locked closet in his home where he could take out several at a
time and admire them. But he never insured the collection. When it came back
from the tour, which had made it famous, he realized he would have security
problems if he continued storing it at home. The New Orleans museum offered him
storage, and he was happy to accept. After the collection spent two years in the
museum’s basement, during which time he never visited it, he knew the time had
come to sell. “I don’t miss the pots; I’ll always love them in retrospect,” he
says. “I hope the buyers will love them as much as I did.”
Illustration by Tim Bower.
Julie Connelly is a writer based in New York. julieconnelly@msn.com.
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