The situation
A painter I've admired for years asked me to help with a problem most artists have and few talk about: three decades of work, stacked in a studio and two storage units, with no list, no condition reports, and a growing sense that something important was going to get lost.
Some works had been sold and never recorded. Some had been exhibited and come back with labels from galleries that no longer exist. A few had been painted over. The artist knew where everything was, roughly, in the way you know where everything is in your own kitchen. Nobody else did.
What I'm doing
- Building a complete inventory: every work numbered, measured, photographed and described, with its exhibition and ownership history where it can be reconstructed.
- Condition-checking as we go, and setting up a conservation queue in order of urgency rather than in order of the artist's affection.
- Reorganising storage so the studio gets its floor back and the work stops living in the damp.
- Identifying a core group of works that should never be sold, and a second group that could be placed well, with the right collectors and institutions.
- Writing it all down in a form the artist's family could pick up and understand without me.
How I think about it
A collection manager's real job is to make good decisions possible for people who aren't in the room yet. Every choice I make here, from the numbering system to the storage racks, is a bet on what someone will need to know in twenty years, and on how much of the artist's own knowledge I can get onto paper before it's only in their head.
I also think this work should be done with the artist, not to them. We spend one afternoon a fortnight going through the racks together. I get the stories, the records get better, and the painter gets to see thirty years of work with a stranger's eyes, which, they tell me, has changed what they're painting now.
Why there are no names or photos here
This entry is about my process and judgement, not about anyone's collection. Collection and advisory work is confidential by default, so I write about it without names, without images, and without the details that would identify a client. If you're thinking about working with me, this is what you actually want to know anyway: how I think, and how I treat the work.