The hammer falls. The room applauds. You’ve won the lot. Now what? Buying a major work of art is often treated as the final step in the collecting process, but in reality, it is just the beginning of ownership.
“Ownership begins once the hammer falls,” says Ben Clark, CEO of Cadogan Tate, a premium logistics firm that specializes in the handling, transport, and climate-controlled storage of fine art and antiques. “What always struck me from my time in the auction house is that you spend all your time building up to the moment of sale, and then you move on to the next thing. Our job really starts at that moment.”
What follows after a sale is a complex chain of transport, installation, and ongoing care – one that, for some collectors, may never really end. “Auctions and art fairs are built for moments,” Clark says, “whereas our services are built for the years in between those moments.”
But while the company’s white-glove services are often associated with what happens after an acquisition, Clark recommends considering – and planning – the logistics before making the purchase, particularly when acquiring a large or complex work.
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“When you buy a house, you get a surveyor and your architect to come in before you buy, and ask them, ‘Can I do what I want to do?’” Clark says. The same thinking, he argues, should apply to major works of art. “If clients are unsure, we will talk them through it before the purchase.”
The complexity, Clark explains, is not necessarily dictated by the value of the work. “Any work of art requires a level of care,” he says. “Value is emotional as well as financial, so we will put as much care into packing a $50,000 painting as a $40 million one,” he adds.
Instead, the practical considerations tend to come down to the specifications of the piece itself. “You can’t stretch an Anselm Kiefer that’s five meters with ships and canoes protruding from it. So you need to think about how you’re going to ship and store it before you acquire it.” Weight also needs to be considered: “Even a small sculpture can weigh quite a lot.”
One recent Cadogan Tate project illustrated exactly why that advance planning matters. The company was tasked with installing a large-scale Mark Bradford painting in a client’s Manhattan apartment overlooking the Guggenheim Museum. “They wanted it in a specific room, but they hadn’t thought about how to get it up there before they acquired it,” Clark says. “And you can’t unstretch a Mark Bradford.”
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A helicopter was considered at one point, but the team eventually settled on a crane. “It went three times the height of the Guggenheim, and we had to close the road,” he recalls. “But that’s business as usual – it caused challenges for a week or so, but we got around it.”
Once the work has been acquired, the next challenge is getting it from A to B. And, Clark reiterates that timing is key. “The earlier the better,” he says, noting that there are, naturally, lead times for shipping by air or sea, though for interstate transport, tighter turnarounds are possible thanks to Cadogan Tate’s own shuttle route, which can move works of art from New York to Los Angeles in less than 48 hours.
But the method of transport is only part of the equation. The crate itself needs to protect the work from both physical and environmental damage in transit. “We think of it in terms of three levels,” he says. “You can have a straightforward cardboard crate, which is usually absolutely fine, even for relatively high value works as cardboard is very resilient.” Clients can also opt for a wooden crate, or go up to a museum-grade crate, “with padded interior, so there is no room for any movement.”
“It doesn’t need to be too complicated,” Clark adds. “It’s just about ensuring you’ve ticked all the boxes and everyone understands the level of risk.” Environmental risks to note include light – “especially for works on paper” – as well as humidity and temperature, particularly for wooden works. “Oil on canvas tends to be more resilient.”
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Then comes the part that can prove just as complicated as the journey itself: getting the artwork into its final home and onto the wall. Cadogan Tate has three chief art technicians – two in America and one in Europe – who deal solely with really high-value work from early on in the process. “They assess the risk before we do anything. They are there to say ‘this has inherent risk’ – whether it’s the environment around the picture, hanging it appropriately or ensuring that the wall or roof is secure,” Clark says.
And specific properties can present challenges of their own. Cadogan Tate was responsible for moving the Obamas out of the White House. “That was quite tricky because we had to do it in the window between them exiting and Trump’s inauguration, which was one day,” Clark says. “And we had to do it under Secret Service.”
He also recalls a more recent project, a $200,000 design desk destined for a château north of Paris. “The château had a moat around it, and we couldn’t get the desk across the drawbridge; it was too small. The only way in was for the team to put it on a rowing boat, wade alongside it, and then pull it through the study window in a tower.”
It’s not just historic properties where expert knowledge – and a little creativity – is required. “We’re the only business that has teams who work exclusively on superyachts, installing collections of art and design furniture,” Clark says.
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While the team would never push back to a client, they are on hand to advise on the conditions a work will face. “They know to say, ‘We can hang your work with paper in here behind glass, but the humidity and the salt air will be far from ideal.’”
And though you might think installation is the end of the road, usually, that isn’t the end of the relationship. “It doesn’t stop once you’ve moved in,” Clark says. “Some people want us to keep going back and rehang, reposition, reorganize,” adding that “many of these collectors live in four or five properties and on a superyacht.”
For some collectors, that can mean the artwork effectively travels wherever they do. “If you want to move your artwork for the summer, we’ll help you do that,” says Clark.
“When I was at Christie’s, there was a collector who had a favorite Dali painting, and she had to have the Dali in her bedroom wherever she was in the world,” Clark recalls. “And she lived between London, New York, and Italy. She would take her Dali in a specially built briefcase wherever she was,” Clark says. “We help people create solutions to those kinds of requirements, too.”
Of course, not every move is planned. The company’s work also extends to disaster recovery. “If there’s a hurricane season coming, we will come in and secure your artworks in secure storage for that season and then reinstall them,” Clark says. During Hurricane Katrina, Cadogan Tate was flown in “as part of the almost like emergency service” to remove items from museums and private residences affected by the storm. It’s a reminder that, for collectors, protecting a work of art doesn’t end once it has reached its destination.
