Recently an art professor revealed that when student works go on student shows or school shows, the insurance the school would pay covers only the material costs of the works, meaning the student art works have literally no added value.
Category Archives: insurance and art
Deutsche Börse collection and insurance
This is the spectacular view of Deutsche Börse Group (German Stock Exchange Group) lobby/exhibition space. Spectacular, not least because over the art works (and the chatting staff), there hovers realtime quotation information.
The other point worth mentioning is, Deutsche Börse maintains a collection of contemporary photography, with a good percentage of which mounted in the building. They do not intend to sell them and state their value as that which they were bought in at. However, in order to eliminate damage costs the works are insured, which indicates that they are evaluated by the insurance company yearly and insured against this (we could imagine, well incrementally increasing) value.
Insurance, in this case, is a fully technical apparatus, yet mirrors exactly the dynamics of value of art.
Dear art student, …
Readers Theater Project
Insurance Readers Theater Project
Instructions
Take definitions of standard terms of an insurance contract as description of roles in a theater play, assign each person a role;
Take the insurance contract as a theatre play script (and furthermore, as voices*), each person reads in sequence the relevant parts where his or her assigned role is concerned.
* According to Franco Berardi, the only way to overcome the problem of stagnated sociality symptomatic of financial capitalism is by poetry and voice. Poetry, ‘the excess of sensuousness’, can ‘[reactivate] the emotional body, and therefore [reactivate] social solidarity’ whilst voice ‘cannot be reduced to the operational function of language.’ (requoted from Daniel Hartley)
Please contact the author for a sample of insurance contract/script, or feel free to use your own contracts.
On sale, or better, to be insured?
photo by author
Between May 1 and June 8, Storefront for Art and Architecture puts itself on sale: this is of course part of an exhibition, which is about real and immaterial properties that are open to be purchased for monetary returns. It also offered the chance to Shut Up Storefront – literally, by purchasing the otherwise opening hours.
This attempt reveals what is at play between higher financial players (private and institutional donors) and non-profit art/architecture institutions, but also the perceived added value of the institution itself (imagine a Storefront director’s chair being sold at USD 200, while the air in between panels at USD 1,000.)
Inspired by Storefront, here is another proposal for consideration: a non-profit institution is to offer the public shares of the insurance (be it for real property or fictional property) of the institution, i.e. the public is to donate (and potentially be the beneficiary of, if calculated out well,) the insurance of exhibition/office/public space/blogsphere/creativity/etc. to the institution.
This is not funny
One artist recently revealed that the only time in her artistic career she earned money with her art was from the insurance – a child broke her work and the gallery, luckily, had it insured. Alas.
To this artist I am greatly indebted for my idea on a research of art and insurance.
insured artworks in free ports
On Sep 1, 2012, The Economist reported on insured art pieces and revealed that in the world’s largest free ports (special warehouses) in Geneva and Zurich, “well over $10 billion-worth of paintings, sculpture, jewels, gold, carpets and other items” are believed to be held. The majority of these are never displayed.
Several facts in this piece of news prompt the definition of value. Surely, there is a clear manifestation of the correlation of their embedded (auction/exchange) value and insured value. But when they almost entirely escape any exposure to and engagement with the outside world (The Economist noted in the free ports “they can change hands tax-free”), as if maintaining by a stream of insider activities an ecology of value, what happens to their real value? (Is there value from objects looking at objects in a speculative realistic interpretation?) Looking at the other side of the coin, we could ask, what is the real value of public perception of art pieces that are exhibited publicly in the name of public goods?
Disclaimer: the blog entries under “Research Updates” are findings and thoughts around the theme of art and insurances, they do not necessarily reflect the views of 5urich.
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