FINE ART SHIPPING was recently privileged to provide packing and crating services for the ART in Embassies program, which exhibits works of American artists in the public rooms of embassy residences around the world. Yes, Virginia, a government program that actually and directly supports the arts, and has done so since its inception in 1964. Way to go, State Department!

Artworks are loaned by artists, corporations, museums and private collectors, and the AEIP pays the costs of packing and shipping to the destination city. Further information on the program is available at : http://aiep.state.gov/index.cfm

The site also supplies guidelines for artists interested in submitting art to their Registry. For students and other art hungry travelers, the website contains a listing of what works are currently on exhibit in which cities, together with artist statements and details of the pieces on view. This is a great way to support American artists and to beat the lines and entrance fees encountered at so many better known exhibition venues.

Betsy Dorfman

Carole Choucair Oueijan, Layaleena, 48 x 72, smalti, 24 karat gold smalti, granite, marble, onyx, crystallino, mother of pearl, fresh-water pearl, hematite, coral, jade, quartz

I always crate artworks from the inside-out; at least in my bean, in the design stage. But the actual building can vary. Sometimes it can proceed in any order, and sometimes the crate must be built before the art is approached. It depends on whether the artwork is packaged in soft materials separate from the crate, or whether it must be built directly into the crate with a cushioned wood structure. When it’s the former, I occasionally prefer to pack the art before the crate is started. This is hardly necessary, but it can save a little desk time when dealing with a number of irregular shapes that aren’t so irregular that they require much planning ahead.

This was one of those jobs that fell into that little gray area. It just made more sense to figure out how large the package would be by packing it. The piece was composed of twenty-odd irregular sections of mosaic of variable thickness. It would happily ride flat in a stack of foam-welled trays. With such a simple packing approach, it was more efficient to sort the elements by relative size and shape in “real time,” as it was being loaded onto trays. I started with a rough guideline of 36″ x 24″ trays, and from that starting point my crater found that he could fit all elements onto 13 trays at 32″ x 24″. I’m starting to make it sound more complicated than it was. Before I knew it, the trays were packed and I had a nice boxy package to measure for the crate.

Our thanks to Carole Choucair Oueijan for her permission to include images of her artwork. Layaleena, an Arabic/Lebanese word for “Splendor Nights”, is a commission piece installed in a home in Greece. In this scene the goal was to reflect the magnificence of the Lebanese nights and lifestyle of the past. Layaleena is made out of 21 pieces and took 10 months to complete.

-Chris

As crating manager, I sometimes get a self-satisfied chortle out of packages sent to me from various sources, private and professional. With the Tour de France 2009 in mind, this one was more amusing than most. And also more annoying.

The front wheel of my bicycle was recently crushed in a collision with a car on my way to work. It being a lightweight road bike c. 1986, I figured I’d maintain the vintage and save money in the same stroke by getting another set of French mid-80s wheels. I love eBay.

I guess it’s good that Mavic wheels are known to be pretty much bomb-proof, because the package in which they arrived was barely fit for a local delivery. The front wheel (the one I need right away) has damaged spokes, but they can be replaced. I hope that’s the only reason why the rim looks almost as bad as the one that got run over.

The thing is, these wheels are really strong; so what went wrong here? Let’s take a look.

1. Though made for shipping wheels, the box was recycled from an earlier use. There’s a different brand printed on the outside, and what passed for interior packing had clearly lost its shape prior to this use.

2. Even if new, this type of packaging is designed to be supported by other significant factors; like bundling them in large numbers on a shipping pallet. It was clearly not designed for overseas travel on its own.

3. Due in part to the used packaging, the three parts being shipped were not adequately secured inside the box. A small bag holding the steel skewers was tossed in loose to jump around inside the box, and the hub of each wheel was jammed into the spokes of the other.

As a result, the box got crushed. The cogs of the rear wheel arrived poking a 5″ diameter hole through the box, and three spokes had somehow snapped off of the front rim.

As a bonus, the shipper decided to use stamps to send the box to California. From France. I hate eBay.

So how would I have packed this, assuming that a crate was not an option?

…Let me stress that the following solution is not something that we would do here at Fine Art Shipping. Unless the client was renting a dedicated shipping container to be loaded by us, we would insist on a full wood crate for international shipping. But let’s just say that I wanted to ship the wheels back on my own dime, while trying to mitigate further damage. Due to their odd size, I would start with a custom box, built from a couple sheets of double-wall cardboard.

1. I would cut two panels of 3/8″ plywood to reinforce the interiors of the two large walls of the box.

2. Then I would surround the wheels with 2″ bumpers of Ethafoam. I would stack another 1″ of foam on these bumpers and slot them for the wheel rims. This would keep the wheels separated and secure in their cushioning.

3. Finally I would bag and secure the third part – the skewers (wheel axles) – well away from the wheels. They could be embedded in the bottom foam bumper, or the bag could be screwed to the plywood sides.

C‘est la vie.

Hey, lookit these pretty stamps.

-Chris

The most recent and local controversy over museums de-accessioning artworks involves a decision by the Orange County Museum of Art to sell multiple artworks to a private collector. Having learned of this transaction only after the fact, the Laguna Art Museum lodged a protest, upset that they were not offered an opportunity to acquire the artworks in advance of the offer to a private citizen.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/06/ocma-sells-paintings-to-private-collector-prompting-criticism.html

Without knowing the details, and having a working relationship with both museums, we have no interest in taking sides, except to say that hopefully the new owner of these artworks will see fit to lend them early and often. As is obvious the basic difference between works held so-called publicly, in museums, and those held privately, does often come down to a matter of access. But there are museums who hold art off public view and, likewise, some private lenders whose artworks are out on loan more often than not. Some lenders loan freely, some sparingly, and some grudgingly. In 25 plus years of dealing with lenders and borrowing institutions we have pretty much seen it all. We thought you might enjoy a peek into this process which is not as cut and dried as you might suppose.

In some cases purchasers of high end artworks agree to loan the work to bona fide requestors as a part of the acquisition process. In other cases no guidelines apply and it is simply up to the borrowing institution to contact owners of prospective works and convince them to participate. Such convincing can be a simple phone call or a long process involving delicate negotiations over many weeks or months.  Luckily, that’s not our turf.  If these efforts are successful a loan agreement is drafted which sets forth various stipulations such as term of the loan, conditions of transport, insurance, etc.  We generally come into the picture once the loan agreements are in place; we receive an inventory of artworks and a corresponding list of lenders. It is our responsibility to contact the lenders to arrange packing and transport to the exhibition venue. On paper, this is all very organized. In real life, not so much.

Hi, this is FINE ART SHIPPING and we’d like to arrange a date this week to pickup the Prestigious Artwork which you are kindly lending to the Prestigious Museum Exhibition next month.  Hello ?  Hello?

Some lenders, having agreed to the transaction some time ago, change their mind or, let’s say, their enthusiasm diminishes once the reality of giving up the artwork becomes apparent through our phone call. We leave messages, they don’t call back. Or they do call back, and claim the loan agreement is faulty in some way. More delay. Or, the artwork it turns out has been taken to their ranch in Montana, and the caretaker can only be reached there on alternate Thursdays by meeting him in town at the feed store. Where there’s a lack of will there’s no way.

Other lenders could not be more helpful, but experience separation anxiety once our art handlers actually arrive to collect the piece. In one case, a lender actually cried, seeing the bare space left on the wall where her favorite “child” had lately hung. We moved another favorite over from an adjoining room to compensate, calming her down and making the room livable again. At the other extreme, we’ve shown up only to be waved into the living room with an offhanded “take whatever it was you came for…” as the housekeeper or spouse went on with more pressing business.

I once had the personal trainer of a lender who was out of town sit me down at a table and go over every comma in the loan agreement, occasioning many calls back and forth to the museum representative, before “Hans” would release the piece. We were supposed to wrap the painting, but I was so fearful Hans the Inquisitor would change his mind that I simply picked it up “naked” and carried it out through the lobby. The (by now new) security officer on the desk apparently had no problem with a person he had never seen before carrying a valuable painting off into the sunset.

Then there are the occasional lenders who try to get our crews to do extra work, tacitly or even not so subtly expecting that such activity will be billed to the borrower or organizer of the exhibition. Take the artwork off the wall? Sure. Put another painting quickly in it’s place? Reasonable, if essentially a switch of like sizes. Bring the two heavy framed antique mirrors and the chandelier in from the garage and install them “so the room will look nice again”?  I don’t think so. Upon return from exhibition, some lenders see this as a chance to re-position all the art in a room or to have us unpack and install a few new paintings that have arrived in the meantime. Generally this works out, and lenders are able to separate (and be willing to pay for) services beyond what is included in their agreement with the borrowing institution. Sometimes the institution agrees to pay even for quite outlandish “extras” based on the deep pocket status of the benefactor in question. Basically, “do whatever they want and try to get the hell out of there” is the instruction, delivered with a sigh. Every art handler has stories of moving the refrigerator out to the pool house, or switching dressers in upstairs bedrooms, all in the normal course of putting a 20 x 20″ framed artwork back on the wall in the den. Lenders have to be made happy, on this the art world depends.

Betsy Dorfman

I get some variation of this phone call all too frequently:

ARTIST:   Hi, I have a crate I need to ship to London. I built it myself.

ME:           Okay, we can help with that. I will need the dimensions and weight.

ARTIST:   I got everything in one crate, if you can believe that. Eight by seven by about, oh the height has gotta be, I’m five eight so let’s say, six.

ME:          (Hopefully, but knowing better) Feet or inches?

ARTIST:  (Proudly) Feet. It’s in my garage. You’ll need a lift gate. Wait, you thought I was five inches tall?

ME:          What is the size of the largest work in the crate. These are paintings?

ARTIST:  There’s a couple of big ones, maybe four, then a whole bunch of medium and little ones that I stacked double high and double wide. Kind of up on a shelf thing on the inside. Sectioned. That way it could all go in one crate.  (Pause) Hello?

ME:      Sorry I’m just…is there any way you can cut this thing in half?

FADE OUT

Okay, some actual useful information:

HEIGHT

Many airlines have height cutoffs of 60-63″, depending upon the actual equipment flown. Above that height you will need to book on a freighter, which gives you fewer flights to choose from and is often more expensive. You typically need an advance booking on a freighter, and such freight can wait in line sometimes for days until space is available.  Sometimes you can’t avoid this, with a large installation piece or bronze, but where it can be avoided it should be.  

WEIGHT/HANDLING

Oversize crates cost more at every stage of shipping and handling, and if very heavy can be dangerous to move as well. They are more likely to be fork lifted rather than hand carried or dollied.

FREIGHT COST

With inventories of mixed sizes it is nearly always cost effective to fabricate multiple crates with contents grouped by size.  It is the overall volume that determines freight cost, and splitting into multiple crates often saves on final volume. 

ACCESS: THE END GAME

Also consider that the average doorway is only 30 or so inches wide. If your shipment is going to a corporate location, office building, or a downtown gallery your giganto crate may not fit through the doorway. Not every business has a dock or wide receiving doors. So now you’ve got some preparator unpacking the crate at the curb — not going to be your biggest fan once that is done.  And then what do they do with the crate? Have you seen the average gallery store room? 

DAMAGE ISSUES 

Most damage in shipping actually happens during packing and unpacking. Creating an oddly sectioned crate, which also has a high center of gravity, may not be simple to unpack. The recipient could open the wrong side or not perceive where all the works are located. We have seen examples where small works were sectioned off behind larger works, but where the separating foam or cardboard was mistaken for the wall of the crate.  Out goes the crate into the trash still holding the small works – ouch.   Always include a pack sheet detailing the crate contents, and unpacking instructions as well. Unfortunately many artist packed crates don’t have such instructions included.

 RETURN SHIPPING

If the destination can’t or won’t store your oversize crate, you may be asked to pay for storage at an offsite location or charged for a new crate to return unsold items. If you are lucky and they do store it, and, even luckier, they sell half of your artworks at the show, now you are going to have to ship that huge crate back half empty. Had you built 2 or 3 crates, chances are the returning volume could have been downsized into 1 of 2 of those.

Like most art handlers we are happy to give guidance to artists or others building crates. Call us BEFORE you build and we may be able to save you some money, or grief, or both.

Betsy Dorfman

A well known science research institute selected this dramatic cover artwork for a recent special journal report on China. The sedate and aesthetic rendering of classical chinese characters perfectly set the tone desired by the prestigious Max Planck Institute. Except that, unfortunately, the researchers forgot to do their, well, research. As in, hiring a translator. Turns out this was not a poem or artistic composition but an advertisement.

Which is how the latest edition of this well regarded a scientific journal was published with a cover extolling the services of stripping housewives in a brothel! The poetic looking artwork was in fact a flyer offering “hot houswives in action”, put out (pun intended) by a Macau strip club. Follow the link below for further details.

Leaving aside what your artwork “means,” you now have to be concerned with what it says, especially with so much modern art incorporating symbols, words, icons, and elements from disparate cultures. It probably won’t be long before art services companies such as ourselves offer translation and “embarrassment risk management” services together with our usual roster of packing, crating, storage and shipping services.

Betsy Dorfman

Click here for the full article from The Independent.