Best Practices: Banker's Agenda
Art and Commerce
Regan Good
10/01/2004

At the top of the wide, curved staircase leading to JP Morgan Private Bank’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, three felt suits on simple wooden hangers hang in a row against a white wall. For a moment, it looks as though three classic commuter outfits from a John Cheever story have been dropped off from the dry cleaners and hung temporarily on the landing. But these suits are by the German artist Joseph Beuys, one of the artists included in JP Morgan’s world-famous corporate art collection.

Manuel Gonzalez, the firm’s global art expert, delivers a tidy, impromptu lecture in front of each work. He knows the corporate collection intimately, and he should—for 10 years he was its curator. Since 1998, however, he has focused on advising private banking clients on their disparate art collections.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Gonzalez was at the center of artistic activity in New York, working first as director of the prestigious Holly Solomon Gallery and following that as codirector of the Sidney Janis Gallery. Gonzalez knew the major artists of the day both professionally and socially, giving him unique insight into the burgeoning art market, as well as the aesthetic ideas behind its wares. He is known internationally as an expert on mid-19th century and contemporary art. Though he works in a bank, Gonzalez helps his clients much as any high-end art consultant would. Considering the robust health of the contemporary art market, he finds himself much in demand.

Full Service
Some private banks, looking increasingly like one-stop shopping hubs, offer us access to art advisors as part of a value-added package. But we must ascertain whether our collections are best served by bank-affiliated advisors or independent consultants. Private art consultants say that banks’ art advisory services have far too many clients to be able to offer comprehensive services. They suggest that intangibles, such as art-world connections, deep knowledge of the market and nuanced expertise, are only achieved after years of study, experience and pavement pounding. What may surprise some private consultants—and some collectors—is that the country’s leading private bank art advisory services, at JP Morgan and Citigroup, are both headed by professionals with years of art world experience.

Citigroup Private Bank has the longest-standing art advisory service in the country—perhaps even the world; European private banks have only recently established art advisory services. Started in 1979 by New York art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, Citi’s organization and its comprehensive scope subsequently served as a model for Christie’s and Sotheby’s art advisory services. Besides the department’s prescient founding on the eve of the 1980s art market boom, what gives Citigroup its true cache is that its founders were, as one private advisor put it, “real” art people who “knew what this kind of service should be.” (However, critics note that Deitch returned to private art dealing in 1996, and see this as evidence that “real” art people do not stay at banks.)

TOP VIEW
A number of private banks seek to be one-stop shops, offering advisory services on topics well beyond their traditional ambit. In the first of a series on these extramural consulting services, we examine the firms’ art advisory offerings. Independent advisors often scoff that the banks cannot possibly have the contacts, or devote the resources, to meet the needs of a world-class collector. However, several firms do provide significant value, and those seeking discretion and objectivity may find their work beneficial.
Mary Hoeveler, current managing director of Citigroup’s Art Advisory Service, is, like Deitch, a “real” art person. As a senior vice president at Christie’s before joining Citigroup, she was able to forge those crucial connections with dealers, museums and collectors. With three other full-time art advisors and six contracted art consultants coming from auction houses, galleries, museums and academia at her disposal, Hoeveler says Citigroup has been able to influence some of the most important private collections in the country. The department offers services from cataloging to art purchasing to philanthropic and legacy planning, and employs a full-time collections manager, who advises clients on the maintenance, preservation and documentation of their collections.

Despite the pedigrees of some bank art consultants, private art dealers are skeptical. Abigail Asher of Guggenheim Asher Associates, an art consultancy firm with offices in Los Angeles and New York, does not believe advisors within banks can wield the kind of influence needed to achieve access to important pieces, something that high-end collectors demand. “A high-profile art advisor is an introduction of power. You are someone dealers have dealt with again and again and again. They know that you have buying power behind you. They will come to you with pieces; they will look out for you. You need to look at a tremendous amount of art for a very long time, and know a lot of information and people before you can be effective.”

Another well-known art advisor, Thea Westreich, the organizing principal behind many important contemporary art collections, doubts that any bank art advisory can focus on client needs the way she can. Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services in Manhattan has seven full-time employees, as well as two contracted independent curators. The firm currently carries only about 14 clients at a time. “I don’t mean to overstate things, but my business is in a class of its own,” Westreich asserts. “An art advisor should have no other interests than you. That’s the key. The private banks are just overextended; they can’t go as in depth as we can, because they have far too many clients.” She adds: “Money doesn’t get you all you want in the art world.”

Hoeveler counters that Citigroup’s advisory service keeps its client numbers small to ensure that their collections get the attention they need. “We handle far less than 1 percent of the Citigroup Private Bank’s clientele (approximately 25,000 to 30,000 strong), and with a 10-person staff, we are still very busy.” On the other hand, JP Morgan does seem thinly stretched. The bank estimates that 25 percent to 30 percent of its private banking clients use the art advisor services, be it for a one-off advisory on a particular painting or for a more extensive project like the organization and curatorship of an exhibition. Gonzalez works with Jessica Burne Davis, a banker who joined the art advisory group in 2001. The two of them, plus two part-time consultants, take care of the entire client list.

Hoeveler concedes that some clients at Citigroup prefer to use the bank’s services for simple transactions or simple research questions, rather than to rely on the company to support and guide their total collection. “Some of our clients are extremely knowledgeable, well-established collectors themselves who are on museum boards, who just like the convenience of our representation,” she says. “They’re busy, and can’t cover all the auctions and the galleries and do the research themselves. They like having additional eyes and ears in the marketplace on their behalf. They also like being able to pick up the phone or pop us an email to get a work added to their insurance policy, or shipped or framed, or to have a conservator sent in.”

Hoeveler adds that some collectors prefer a more anonymous intermediary, like a bank, than a highly visible private art consultant. “Our customers like the anonymity; all transactions are conducted through us and in our name so their privacy is assured,” she says.

Karl Schweizer, head of USB’s European art advisory division, says that a third of his clients are sophisticated art collectors who like to use the bank’s services for quick questions. “They like to double-check with us to compare prices, get some ideas from us or give a search mandate to find a certain painting or sculpture.” Even skeptics concede that private banking art services provide a good appraisal system.
    
While some collectors spare no expense when it comes to their collections, one benefit of using a bank’s advisor is that fees are nominal. JP Morgan charges clients per transaction (say, each time a work is purchased, cleaned or appraised), or clients can pay a retainer for larger, more sustained projects such as total collection management. Citigroup offers a choice of contracts that reflect the amount of work required over a given year. Since these art services are not a substantial revenue source for the banks, clients can have more faith in the firms’ objectivity. Unlike art dealers and consultants who receive commissions, the bank has no vested interest in selling or buying, or promoting particular artists or galleries. The absolute objectivity a bank provides is perhaps its greatest asset.

Disparate Approaches
Not all private bank art advisory departments offer the full service that JP Morgan or Citigroup do. Many firms, including Neuberger Berman and Bank of America, offer loans collateralized by art collections. Also, there is no correlation between a bank’s own art collection and its art advisory services. The curator of Neuberger Ber-man’s corporate collection, Michael Danoff, might look at a client’s collection as a favor, but his job description is to manage the bank’s own collection.

Deutsche Bank, another firm with a huge corporate collection and a small art advisory, confines its work to acting as a vetting service for collector-clients. Thomas Delavan, who runs that business, knows the art world and had a career at Sotheby’s before he entered banking. He also was one of the founding members of the Gramercy International Art Fair, which is now the Armory Show in New York. Delavan talks with Deutsche Bank’s clients about what they have, what they need and what they want for their collections. He then introduces them to the right art experts on the outside.

If we bank with a firm that has a comprehensive art advisory service, our choice as to whether to stay in-house or hire an outside consultant might require some soul searching. Though the structural differences between the two types of consultancies might be negligible, says Allan Schwartzman, a private art advisor, personality issues might be a factor. “There will be personality differences from advisor to advisor, and this is something that needs to be remembered. I go on lengthy art-buying vacations with my clients, and you really need to have a good working relationship, as well as a personal connection, when you spend so much time with someone,” he explains. Another advisor (who wishes to remain anonymous) suggested that, in the ever-social art world, who you know can count a great deal. “Being seen with a Thea Westreich, for example, will no doubt make a lot more of a splash than being seen with, say, me,” this advisor says. But for those of us who wish to collect under the radar, a private banking advisor with experience, expertise and discretion may be just what we need.

Photograph by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.