Insights
By: Anna Smith
5. Adventures in art – a week in the life of a collection manager
Day Five! Friday...
The morning starts extremely early, as we need to travel to an art storage centre outside London to do an inventory check of the items kept there and review the storage conditions. While there, a client calls to discuss a possible attic sale.
By late afternoon, we’re back at our desks and it’s time to spend a few hours updating our client’s inventory management system. It’s important to add new artworks and keep existing records updated. The work is interspersed with calls from a bookbinder conserving rare books for a client and an art shipper with last minute issues related to the export of an artwork for a loan.
We round off the week – phew! – with an evening viewing at the National Gallery. Seeing the show is extra special because a painting belonging to one of our clients is on loan for the exhibition. After so much work to organise the loan, it brings a real sense of satisfaction to see it hanging on the wall!