Insuring Original Art
This is the least romantic thing I will ever write about and one of the most useful, so let me keep it short and practical.
I am an artist and not an insurance professional, so treat this as a prompt to ask your own agent the right questions rather than as advice.
The gap most people do not know about
A standard homeowners policy typically covers fine art only up to a modest sub-limit, and that limit is often far lower than people assume and frequently applies to your art collectively rather than per piece.
So a household with several nice pieces can be well under-covered without anyone ever having made a mistake. The limit was simply never designed for what ended up on the walls.
Scheduling a piece
Above a certain value, art usually needs to be listed individually on the policy, which is called scheduling. It typically means broader coverage, often no deductible on that item, and coverage for the kinds of things that actually happen to art.
Ask your agent two direct questions. What is my current fine art limit, and is it per item or total. And what is the threshold above which a piece should be scheduled.
Those two questions take five minutes and they are the whole exercise.
What they will want from you
Purchase documentation, meaning the invoice or receipt. The certificate of authenticity and any provenance record. Photographs of the piece, including a detail shot. Dimensions, medium and year. And for higher values, sometimes a formal appraisal.
This is exactly why I tell every collector to keep the paperwork. It takes five minutes when the piece arrives and it is genuinely difficult to reconstruct twenty years later.
Things worth asking about specifically
Whether coverage follows the piece while it is in transit or on loan, because damage most often happens while art is moving.
How value is settled in a claim, meaning agreed value versus market value, because those behave very differently when you need them.
And whether appreciation is handled, since a piece acquired years ago may be worth considerably more than the number on the original invoice.
One habit worth building
Once a year, walk the house with your phone and photograph every piece where it hangs, plus a close detail of each.
It takes fifteen minutes, it costs nothing, and it is the single most useful thing you can have if something ever happens. Keep it somewhere that is not only in the house.
What I provide
Every piece leaves here with a certificate of authenticity, a provenance record, dimensions, materials and proper photography.
If you ever need documentation reissued for an insurer, or details on a piece you acquired years ago, write to the studio and I will send it. I keep the records permanently, and that is part of what you bought.
Warmly,
Dani
