About Me

Every seat in the chain

I began as a gallery preparator, moved to a museum as an audiovisual technician and installer, and from there into art handling services. I went on to work as a driver, a packer, a department manager, and an operations manager, ultimately becoming President and CEO of one of the largest regional fine art services companies in the United States, where I spent nineteen years—eleven of them in leadership. That progression is the foundation of this practice. I understand what a condition report looks like when it has been written with care, and what it resembles after a fourteen-hour installation. I know which provisions in a storage agreement carry real weight and which are largely present for appearance. Having spent two decades on the vendor side, I grasp precisely where a vendor's interests and an owner's interests diverge.

What I have built

I have designed and built out 71,000 square feet of fine art warehousing, including 24,800 square feet of actively climate-controlled storage and 15,000 square feet of standard art storage, as well as three production shops. These specialized projects encompassed climate systems, racking, workflow, security, fire protection, location assignment, and access—all of which are critical elements in art handling services that underpin object security and safety. I have designed facilities that were reviewed by independent parties rather than assessed internally: the earlier facilities by GRASP and AXA Art, and the later ones by Ernst & Young on behalf of the ICEFAT standards committee. External audits are essential to distinguish between merely believing one's standards are sound and having them independently verified. I have also implemented barcode tracking for over 10,000 works and migrated private and public collections into new databasing systems that better served the owner's needs through effective collection management consulting.

Teaching

I have taught professional practice at Cornish College of the Arts, lectured on archival storage and seismic mitigation, and conducted private training sessions on handling and storage for collectors and their staff. Much of what I know has been learned on the job, at the fairs, in the trucks, and where consequences are very real. I can speak from firsthand experience and enjoy giving lectures and workshops about standards and techniques.

Why the owner's side

After nineteen years of moving, building, and storing other people's work, the most frequent request I received—often after hours—was for a straightforward answer about what an owner ought to be asking for. Collection care encompasses a great deal of specialized vocabularies, processes, and approaches that are rarely made explicit to those paying for it. Helping an owner define and properly scope their actual needs, before a vendor defines it for them, is where the greatest value lies.