Art is the largest or at max the second largest asset. People may leave their loved ones when their property catches fire, but grab the artwork and run for the life of the art if not theirs. Art can be outrageously expensive and is almost at par with jewellery in terms of exquisiteness, intricacy and cost. Imagine those movies where there are people smuggling and families fighting over diamonds and rubies, stone specialists closely examining precious stones and super secret transactions with dollars having innumerable tailing zeros. Now replace the stone with art pieces, and everything is just the same. 

So this is where the Collection Managers come in. They are hired by tycoons or corporations for dealing with these delicate darlings. 

But what does a Collection Manager have to do?

Honestly, a lot of paperwork.

Clients see a piece of art through their Art Consultant and they just drop their business cards saying that their manager will take it from here.

Enter the Collection Manager. The art is bought and the title is added to collection. Now begins the real ordeal. Taxes. Art collections have heavy taxes applied on them, so there is obviously a lot of tax paperwork. Then comes the insurance. Your life may not be insured but you art definitely must be. Or else it will just be throwing thousands of dollars in the ocean. Cataloging the piece, Sales agreements, storage agreements and lease agreements come into the picture thereafter. Lease agreements refer to those documents where museums and galleries loan the art from the collector and display it in their exhibitions. The inventory management, maintenance and logistics are looked after. The shipping is also a super tricky area. There are a lot of airship right involved that need to be cleared before a piece of art can safely land in an another corner of the world. Getting experts to come and check on the art work and restoring them is also the job of the manager. Final part of the lifecycle is Succession Planning. This is the most crucial bit according to most Collection Managers and they set about doing it as soon as a transaction is fulfilled. The Succession Plan is used to document the future whereabouts of the piece of art and God forbid if the collector dies without a proper Succession Plan in place. This is especially useful when there are partial ownerships involved. 

A Collection Manager needs to have a lot of focus on:

1. Planning - a lot of long term planning is needed while dealing with art. How will the artwork appreciate in value? What should be done when it appreciates? Who are the buyers worthy of this piece in the market? How will it help in fulfilling the Corporate Social Responsibility? How to loan it? What would be the longevity of this asset? And many more of such questions come into the job of a Collection Manager.

2. Organizing - The Collection Manager has the utmost responsibility of having the paperwork sorted for every piece in the collection. Any bit out of place and the tax committee will come crashing on them leading to hefty penalties.

3. Leading - They have to cooperate and look over multiple teams and people, the curators, the consultants, the lawyers and legal teams to name a few. 

 

So it seems like the job of a Collection Manager ain't easy!