By Hope Wolman of Insurance Office of Central Ohio

There are many reasons, and these apply not just to art, but to silver, jewelry, musical instruments, wine and many fine things. We like to think about caring for your art and fine things, just like caring for your home. These things have significant value, and need a bit of attention. For our purposes today Coco, I will just address art.

1. Most policies have limits on what you can recover for certain classes of property. Any many policies have exclusions for the breakage of fragile articles. So if you spend money on buying art, you want it protected; you don’t want to have a loss that is unrecoverable. Moreover, insuring certain art often costs less than insuring general contents.

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Did you see this article about a prominent art dealer accused of stealing his clients art and money? According to the article and to this one, this art dealer hung his clients’ art in his gallery, sold it (sometimes more than once) and kept the money. A giant Ponzi scheme. Allegedly, Robert De Niro and John McEnroe were victims. I don’t know if these allegations are true. And, most dealers I know are terrific and honest and good. But, I do hear stories about crooked dealers more than I would like from a variety of people (and, in fact, just today).

Can we avoid this breach of trust? No, not completely. Think of all the smart and worldly people who lost everything down Madoff’s drain. Getting swindled is a risk of doing business.

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By Jason R. Berne, Esq.

The global search for liquid cash is leading many to look to their art collections for more than mere beauty. This NY Times article told these stories of collectors looking to sell art collections. Most owners of valuable art – corporations, families, foundations, museums – think art’s value can only be accessed through a sale. In fact, often owners choose not to sell, but instead borrow against their art. In many instances, clients borrow in order to purchase more art (for example, to be able to snap up a work suddenly or rarely on the market) or to take advantage of other investment opportunities they see in the stock market or real estate. In our experience, loans made with art as collateral are primarily to high net-worth individuals, galleries, trusts, and museums as a service to their existing private client or trust customers, but we have also seen businesses use their art collections as collateral (or in parlance of the finance world, monetize their assets).

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By William F. Zieske and Coco Soodek, Attorneys at Law

Art shows are great opportunities for showing and selling direct to the public, but often come with high booth fees or esoteric entry rules. Thinking of creating your own art festival, either alone or with other artists? Here are the essential steps to navigating the legal obstacles.

Step One: Shield Yourself
Assuming your festival will be a for-profit venture, create a company to hold and house your festival business. The main considerations are flexibility, tax consequences and protection of the festival’s owners from personal liability for the festival’s misfortunes and mistakes.

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