AXA Art Basel Miami Beach lounge, photo by Robin Hill
Chief Executive Officer for the art insurance company, AXA Art, Dr. Ulrich Guntram knows well art damaging mistakes and the impact on collectors and their collections. This afternoon we spoke to him about how and when to choose an insurer, how to ship art and the very real possibility that a truck transporting your photographs may catch on fire.
Whitewall: What are some of the common mistakes you see collectors make early on, in terms of maintaining, storing, and exhibiting art?
DG: It starts with what we call maintaining a collection in optimal conditions. A collector should be aware of the effects of temperature, humidity, lights, and what in a collection. Many collectors are just unaware. Now the most exposed point in the life of a work of art is when it is in transit. With the globalization of our world, we’ve had lots of trade going on, and the art has followed. We’ve seen a lot of exhibitions moving from France and Italy to China and India, Japan. I’ve heard that there are now just for Abu Dhabi, two major exhibitions headed there for 2010 — all coming from the West. So the more this world becomes a global place in political and economic terms, the more art is in transit. And if transport conditions are poor, it’s not good for the art.
Coming closer to your question we see a lot of bad packaging. It’s amazing how multimillion dollar objects are just wrapped, put it crates which are just a wooden boxes. There have been situations where shippers carry furniture today, tomorrow maybe some tires, and the next day a piece of multimillion dollar art. There is a really a lack of standards in the industry.
WW: Do you see more companies that are not qualified to transport art transporting art?
UG: Well, unfortunately there’s no certification, there’s no special license you need to get to transport works of art. And exhibition organizers are under tremendous budget constraints. They tend to take the cheaper one. We have seen works of art close to 100 million in poor crates, standing on the runway in the rain. So these things happen.
WW: What’s the saddest thing you’ve seen recently, in terms of arts being poorly shipped?
UG: Two years ago, we had an oversized painting a gentleman shipped from Luxembourg to Florida It was an oversized painting put in a huge crates and the crates unfortunately didn’t fit in the truck so they just took out the painting unprotected, and squeezed it into the truck. It arrived as a total loss. Some people, even high class art dealers either are not aware or have no problem shipping their multimillion dollar art with one of those overnight services in trucks which all of a sudden go up in fire — this happened once.
WW: So when collectors are looking to ship, what do they need to look for in a shipping company? What questions should they ask?
UG: First of all, take someone with a reputation as an art transporter who can give you good references. The questions are very simple: How do you package it? Let them explain how they wrap it, how they build crates. In the extreme crate should be a scientific box. A few years ago we shipped a Rafael from the Louvre to the High Museum in Atlanta. The insurance value was $275 million. The painting was put in a crate which was built to our specifications – it could survive an air crash at sea. It had a GPS, and a monitoring system which was regularly checked for the temperature, and humidity. And then, what sort of vehicles do you use? Are they protected, do they have air suspension? Do you have qualified personnel? If they go by air which airline? Do they uses a low cost airline or a high-quality airline? These are very simple questions you don’t need to be an expert to ask these questions and assess whether the answers make sense.
WW: Now onto art Insurance — at what point as a collector do you need to get insurance?
UG: We usually say from $100,000 or $200,000 onward. There are some myths about art insurance: that it’s too expensive, too complex, too discrete. Art insurance is much less expensive than any other insurance. It’s not that complicated. It’s a pretty straightforward process, and everything that looks like it’s complicated we take care of with our own experts. And discretion is the ultimate mandate for us. We know that our clients don’t want that data disclosed.
I also think there are misconceptions about homeowners insurance — household usually covers pieces up to very low levels. In some policies it’s 20% of the total value, which is nothing. Household insurance only covers some perils. Ours covers everything bad that could happen to a piece of art. Homeowners also only cover what is in the house. If you take a piece of art and you move into your country house it is not covered. It’s covered worldwide under our policies.
Plus, you not only get much better coverage you also get unrelated services. If it’s damaged, we know the best restorers, whether it’s an old master, contemporary art glass, photo anything. If it’s stolen, we work hard to get it recovered.
WW: What are some things collectors should use to protect against art theft?
UG: It starts with proper documentation because if something is stolen and you don’t know what it is you’re looking for, we will not find it. It’s very simple, we find that many collectors don’t take photographs.
Then, you need to have some mechanical systems so that if a thief tries to break into your home or your museum, and the alarm is ringing, the mechanical protection keeps that thief out of the building for 5 to 10 minutes until security personnel is there. Some professional gangs are specialized in using this timeframe to break in take whatever they can, then disappear before security arrives.
The human factor is also important. For example, we found very often that small gangs are triggering false alarms several times until the security staff starts switching off the alarms. Then they have free access. So it’s important to have someone there to say this may not be as a false alarm. If you have the electrical system, the mechanical protection, and the human element, then you can be pretty relaxed if on top of all that you have a good insurance.
Photos of the AXA Art Basel Miami Beach lounge and Dr. Ulrich Guntram by Robin Hill.
