Managing and selling
artworks and collections

The Law Offices give you clear advice on managing and selling artworks and collections and works closely with regulated and/or trusted art experts.

We work with you to determine what’s best for your beneficiaries and/or your collection, incorporating a forensic sales and management strategy where appropriate.

Art as an asset

The Law Offices guides you on managing and selling your collection

1

Selling your collection

In conjunction with regulated and/or trusted art experts, The Law Offices forensically develops a sales and marketing strategy to help you get the best return on your investment and handles negotiations/the entire sales process for you.
2

Loaning your works to a museum or gallery

The Law offices negotiates art loan agreements with iconic museums and galleries.
3

Managing and protecting your art collection

In addition to due diligence reviews, The Law Offices regularly handles questions relating to export restrictions, authenticity and provenance, as well as insurance coverage. We also provide guidance on setting up curatorial systems.
4

Looking towards the future

The Law Offices advises on establishing art trusts, while taking other assets into account, and can also provide guidance on setting up arts-related foundations.
5

Other situations

The Law Offices handles a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional matters involving art, including negotiating finance against artworks instead of sales.

The Law Offices’ Expertise

Read about recent questions and situations we have handled for our clients.

We want to develop a management strategy for our art collection

Our clients needed a management strategy for their extensive art collection held on trust, which was spread out between storage in Switzerland, homes in other countries and iconic museums in the UK.

Together with our art experts, we implemented a three-pronged strategy that ensured the artworks were either on display at our client’s home, on loan to museums, or sold. We negotiated loans of high-quality artworks to iconic museums and developed a sales strategy to maximise returns, ensuring a robust marketing strategy and a competitive auction process in locations throughout Europe.

How do I protect my works from seizure while on loan to a museum?

Our clients were planning to loan a number of works to museums in the UK and wanted to ensure that their paintings were protected from claims by third parties while on loan. We determined that the museums were not considered “approved institutions” under legislation and therefore could not give guarantees that works on loan would not be seized for the period of the loan. We then advised the museums to take steps to become approved institutions so that our clients could loan artworks to them.

I want to sell a collection and ensure I get the best deal from auction houses.

In a recent sale we achieved extremely favourable terms for our client through a competitive tender process with major auction houses and some specialist continental auction houses. We negotiated with the auction houses to secure reduced fees relating to commissions [ both seller’s commission and buyer’s premium], insurance, shipping, authentication and marketing and in doing so secured total savings for our client of roughly 15% – 19% with two leading auction houses.

I’m considering accepting artwork as a payment of a debt owed to me.

Our client was owed a substantial sum of money by someone who did not have the liquidity to pay with cash. We arranged for our client to be paid with a painting valued at the amount owed. We confirmed the authenticity of the work, ensured that the correct moment for the passing of risk was outlined and that adequate insurance was in place for transporting the piece.

I am a beneficiary of a trust and display artworks in my home owned by the trust, do I have any reporting obligations?

Our client displayed artworks at home owned by a trust. The Law Offices strategised with local Counsel on the beneficiaries reporting obligations [ as well as reviewing any reporting obligations of the Trustees of the art trust] and any declarations to be made to tax authorities in relation to artworks on loan to them. We also advised on putting in place an agreement to reflect the terms of the loan.