The art market might be shrinking, but the growth of its latest intermediary — the art adviser — defies the backdrop. In 2024, the Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report found that while the market as a whole fell by 12 per cent, the percentage of gallery sales to art advisers doubled and was as high as 8 per cent of the pie for the largest dealers, above their sales to museums (at 7 per cent).
Art advisers can help demystify the opaque art market (when you’re considering spending millions of dollars it is good to know that it is worth it), though the nature of their roles is also somewhat enigmatic. At a base level, they offer independent help on buying or selling art, though plenty happens behind the scenes before and after a transaction.
A good adviser “knows where and how to locate great works and have direct access to the owners”, says Melanie Clore, co-founder of the high-end advisory business Clore Wyndham, for whom discretion is paramount. When it comes to selling, she says, “the financial element is only one detail of the journey” and advice can include choosing to avoid the exposure of a public auction, or not to sell at all.
Having “access” — a word used by all art advisers — is not just about getting into the elusive VIP-day of an art fair, though the proliferation of these and other sales platforms has added to the need to cut through the noise. Coveted works, prices, provenance and insider knowledge, such as for how long a work has been available, are not always obvious, while research and due diligence are vital — Clore notes particularly for works made before 1945 “where areas of restitution are still important”.
Mundane realities such as taxes, laws, shipping, framing and conservation can be considerations that a multimillionaire might not want to take on. “We worry about the boring things so that our clients can worry about the fun things,” summarises Hugo Nathan, co-founder of Beaumont Nathan. He and other high-level advisers are often the visible face of their private clients, including bidding on their behalf at auction (which in turn helps their visibility). Works that Nathan’s firm has bought publicly include Vincent van Gogh’s “Cabanes de bois parmi les oliviers et cyprès”, a moody, swirling late painting picked up for $71mn at Christie’s in 2021.
It isn’t always about multi-million-dollar prices. Clore finds that the adviser-client relationship works best “when you share the same taste and aesthetic . . . it’s a relationship based on trust and mutual respect. It’s like a marriage — when it works well, it is a joyous journey of discovery.”
Not all marriages work out though. And when trust breaks down it can prove ugly — and expensive. In 2023, the American collector Candace Carmel Barasch was among those who sued her art adviser Lisa Schiff for taking millions of dollars meant for art purchases and using them as part of a “much larger scheme” of “taking money from one client to pay for another, and to fund Schiff’s lavish lifestyle”, court papers said. The suit detailed the levels of trust involved: “Schiff had access to and was able to use Candace’s credit card as needed for art purchases, and for payments to vendors and storage facilities.” Schiff, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud, was found to have defrauded 12 clients of approximately $6.5mn and was sentenced to 30 months of prison earlier this year.
Today’s reputable advisers acknowledge the market’s potentially grey areas and are quick to emphasise the importance of clear boundaries, lack of conflict and transparency within their client relationships, including through their fee structures. “We get paid by our clients and no one else, no kickbacks from [other] sellers or galleries, no introductory fees,” Nathan says. They generally take a retainer, with an additional, fixed percentage for individual transactions. Not trading works on their own account, as dealers rather than advisers, is paramount, he says, “and takes real discipline”.
In the art market’s more challenging times, advisers de-emphasise the transactional nature of their role, particularly when it comes to courting the next wave. A growing clientele, both Clore and Nathan find, are the inheriting generation. Beaumont Nathan has formalised this with a new Family Services Advisory arm, which, it says, goes beyond selling off the family jewels. “It’s how you can make a legacy relevant to the children and the grandchildren, so that they want to live with it,” says managing partner Stephanie Armstrong.
Her firm also sees opportunity outside of their London and New York base and is opening in Abu Dhabi later this autumn. “The UAE has been developing culturally for about 20 years, but there is a little bit of a commercial shift, it’s not just the museums now,” says Lateefa bin Hamoodah, a cultural strategist and arts patron who has been appointed as its regional adviser to the Middle East.
Others are using their firms to think more holistically about the arts ecosystem. Alice Black and Tatiana Cheneviere co-founded Black + Cheneviere (B&C) this summer, to address two needs: “We are helping people to build collections, similar to how [art advisory] has been done before, but also building patrons. The generational shift is an opportunity for a real reset,” Black says. Today’s would-be collectors are seeking “purpose” as well as ownership, they say, so B&C’s suggestion to its clients is that their annual budget includes funding an artist’s practice or a grassroots initiative, as well as buying works of art.
Both Black and Cheneviere run their own emerging art galleries — Alice Black and Pipeline respectively — but say that when it comes to the new art scene, this works in their favour. “As gallerists we are uniquely positioned to join the dots. We have a good finger on the pulse, because we are doing it day to day,” Cheneviere says.
For people who feel ready to hire an art adviser, there is no comprehensive directory or ranking system, though the Association of Professional Art Advisors has 185-plus members and a code of ethics. Not everyone in the quiet luxury world of art advice wants to be on a list, though, so in a field where the intermediaries could be in competition with each other, a word-of-mouth recommendation from a gallerist, dealer or auction house specialist seems to be the holy grail. Clore offers one piece of free advice: “Run a mile from anyone who only recommends a work because it’s a good investment.”