Art Collection Insurance
If you collect fine art, even if your collection is small, you know how valuable it is in terms of the pleasure it brings you and your family and in terms of its financial value. If you are relying on your homeowners insurance to cover any losses in relation to your collection, however, you could be in for a rude awakening. Art collections are uniquely valuable, and this is exactly why your approach to insuring them must be uniquely specific. If you have an art collection, it's time to consult with an experienced and dedicated FACE insurance professional.
Your Homeowner's Insurance
Your homeowner's insurance is almost certainly not sophisticated enough to adequately cover your private fine art collection. This coverage has deductibles, coverage limits, and exclusions that aren't geared toward valuable art investments. While it's possible to purchase this kind of coverage for specific pieces of art, this tends to protect you only for that piece and only for its most recent appraisal value. This simply isn't adequate to the value of the collection, the whole of which may well be greater than the sum of its parts.
Further, your collection may not lie financially dormant between appraisals, which should be performed regularly. It's complicated and requires a nuanced coverage approach. The fact is that homeowners insurance agents are often hard-pressed to understand the unique value of art collections, which makes it almost impossible for them to insure these assets properly.
Private vs Commercial Collections
Whether your collection is your own private collection that never leaves your home, is your private collection that you occasionally loan out (either in part or as a whole), or is a commercial collection (whether a studio collection for purchase or a collection for public viewing), you have significant fine art insurance needs. And those are difficult to adequately address without knowledgeable assistance from a fine art insurance professional who's best practiced in the provision of comprehensive coverage that protects art collections from damage, theft, and beyond.
Your Collection
Fine art collections can be any size and can take many forms, but art collections tend to focus on specific categories of fine art like the following:
- Paintings
- Drawings and sketches
- Mosaics
- Prints
- Photography
- Pottery
- Sculptures
- Rare manuscripts and books
- Precious rugs
Most Common Risks
Most fine art collections are delicate and prone to deterioration if they're not kept in a carefully controlled environment. The most serious threats to art collections include
- Water Damage - Water damage can do more damage than almost anything other than fire. A system that detects water leaks and automatically shuts the water supply off can help. Water damage can also be weather driven, and your collection should never be stored in an area of your home that is susceptible to flooding.
- Damaged in transit or upon installation - If you loan your art collection or pieces of your collection out, being damaged in transit or upon installation is not unheard of. Always insist that your pieces are transported and installed by experienced professionals only.
- Theft - Theft of art from private collections is far more common than you probably realize, and it's often predicted on opportunity and isn't perpetrated by masterminds at all. In fact, private collections are far more likely to suffer losses from theft than commercial collections are, and the retrieval rate is dismally low.
Your art collection is likely more vulnerable to damage and loss than you realize, but there are proactive, protective steps you can take to help. One of the most important of these steps is investing in the best art insurance for and your collection, Contact us today!