What’s the Third Dimension?
September 23rd, 2008Most fine art shippers, including ourselves, receive a variety of estimate requests each day from both “civilian” and “industry” clients or potential clients. Often these requests contain details as to artist, title, origin and destination, dates requested, medium, height, and length. Most often missing? The third dimension i.e. the depth. This is so common that we have considered producing T-shirts reading WHAT’S THE THIRD DIMENSION?! If you are interested in receiving one of these, as yet, non existent shirts, let us know. No extra charge for existential overtones.
Upon being asked some requesters seem surprised that the depth would matter. As if, having gone to the bother of telling us that the medium is fossilized possum teeth and pop rocks embedded in resin, how could the depth possibly be of interest? But typically in the end they indulge us and come up with something, oh all right, if you must know…. I have often wondered why this lapse is so frequent, as it seems so logical that artworks, being things, have three dimensions and take up three dimensions in what we like to call real life.
With paintings in particular however, this dimension seems to disappear from the interest radar. Perhaps it is because the depth, measurement back to front, can and does vary with the framing. But that is equally true of the length and height, to some extent. I think the answer more likely is that trained and museum personnel most often think in terms of image size rather than framed size. (Another question every fine art shipper needs to remember to ask!) Image size is their gold standard and depth is not considered. And this omission can and does persist when inventories are passed on for shipping quotes.
Also the depth is generally the smallest dimension of the three and so can seem insignificant. Emphasis on the “seem.” As shippers, we live and occasionally die by volume. Back in my rookie season I worked up a detailed estimate for a multi crate traveling exhibition of sixty or so artworks. Licking my pencil (metaphorically) and conquering my English major’s fear of spatial relations testing of any kind, I grouped the paintings by size, figured my crate dims and was good to go. Except, I failed to ask re image size versus framed size and, worse , I let the customer get away with giving me an “average depth” of 3 inches per artwork. Long story short, the artworks were framed in the most enormous heavy and ornate gilt frames I have ever seen. These babies each needed their own zip code. Every one was 6-8″ inches overall larger than I had estimated including back to front. The real killer, the budget buster, the oh-my-god-you-have-got-to -be-kidding-me element was the depth.
Things I took away from this experience:
- It helps to own the company, because you can’t be fired
- You can’t be fired, but you can be forced to ‘eat’ unusable crates. (No they never come in handy for something else. But we will get to that in another post)
- Average depth is defined as 5″ more than you could possibly imagine
- Customers are very nice except when ten crates turn into twenty
- Fear of spatial relations testing (which of these two hellish objects fits inside this other completely useless diagram) is a reliable predictor of intelligence
- Image size is for politicians, not art shippers
- All correspondence with estimate requesters should begin with “what is the third dimension” and end with “so help you god.”
Betsy Dorfman / Fine Art Shipping
Tags: art shipper, artist, artwork, artworks, average depth, crate dims, depth, fine art, fine art shippers, framed size, framing, gilt frames, image, image size, medium, museum, museum personnel, shipping quotes, third dimension, three dimensions, title, traveling exhibition