Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Venice water levels, New York road closures and London cranes \u2014 getting art around the world involves some heavy-duty logistics. The sheer number of museum exhibitions, art fairs and auctions means that keeping art on the move, and intact, is a multi-billion-dollar industry.It is fraught with issues. \u201cWhen art is in situ, it is relatively safe. When it moves, that\u2019s the danger point,\u201d says Robert Read, head of art and private clients at the specialist insurance company Hiscox. He says that half of the value of their claims from the past 20 years stems from accidental damage of art in transit.There are plenty of horror stories. Rembrandt\u2019s \u201cPortrait of an Elderly Woman\u201d (c1650-52), reportedly estimated for insurance at $12mn, suffered a three-inch-long slash to its bottom right-hand corner, having somehow come out of its packaging in transit between the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 2001. The previous year, vibrations during a flight to Australia meant that pigments on pages from Ireland\u2019s treasured 9th-century \u201cBook of Kells\u201d were damaged.Momart is all too familiar with Venice\u2019s \u2018tidal variations\u2019, which mean if the water is too high then shipments don\u2019t fit under bridges; if too low then transport can hit the bottom of the canalsForklift trucks seem particularly problematic. \u201cI remember a dealer in London who sent a contemporary painting to a client in the US, bought for a few hundred thousand pounds, and it was ruined by the prongs of a forklift truck. So, the dealer sent another work by the same artist to replace it \u2014 and the same thing happened again,\u201d says Chris Bentley, head of fine art and specie at Axa XL.More recently, Read says, technology has dramatically reduced the risks. \u201cFor sculpture, for example, you used to have layers of foam, cut out to sit around a work, but now you can 3D-print the exact shape around it,\u201d he says. Experts also now share videos of how they pack an object at the start of its journey so that it can come back in exactly the same way, he says. For a priceless Picasso, the advice of insurers is succinct: \u201cUse a top-end, specialist fine art shipper,\u201d Bentley says.\u00a0One of these is Momart, whose management is discreet about its clients but, says Guy Morey, its operations director, \u201cyou probably couldn\u2019t name a museum that we haven\u2019t worked for\u201d. One recent project he does open up about is installing Conrad Shawcross\u2019s swirling bronze sculpture, \u201cManifold (Major Third) 5:4\u201d (2023) outside London\u2019s Moorgate Tube station, part of the Crossrail Art Foundation\u2019s public art programme. The 2.3 tonne work travelled by road from where it was made in Spain. Then, after \u201cmonths of planning and discussions\u201d with Transport for London and the City of London, early one Saturday morning it \u201cwas lifted and turned in the air, using a crane and installed with huge bolts fixing it below ground level,\u201d Morey says. The size and weight of the late Richard Serra\u2019s large steel sculptures mean that for his exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery in New York \u201cwe have to close the street and can only do so at certain times\u201d, says gallery director Mark Francis.People buy [art] without realising that it doesn\u2019t fit through their front door. There are ways around \u2014 craning things over buildings or taking out part of a wall \u2014 but it is always worth checkingMomart\u2019s Morey concurs that technology has been a game-changer for the industry. The biggest change, he finds, is less about 3D printing \u2014 \u201cthe packaging is rock-hard, you might need something with a bit more give\u201d \u2014 but \u201cthe ability to track a work, where it is, monitor its temperature or humidity, or any shift in vibrations\u201d. Individual couriers are still regularly used, particularly for major museum exhibitions. \u201cThere is a tendency when lending important works to send a personal escort, such as someone from the museum, not to carry it with them [art tends to go in the hold] but to be there as a work is loaded on to a plane, to watch it being unpacked, and so on,\u201d Read says.Shippers now also use unmarked fleets. \u201cNone of our vehicles are branded any more,\u201d Morey says, adding \u201cnot that they\u2019ve ever been targeted, it\u2019s just to be as careful as possible.\u201d Armed police escorts are also a thing of the past \u2014 \u201cit seemed to draw more attention\u201d \u2014 though for certain clients, unmarked decoy vehicles are used, he says.Each art-filled city has its own distinct issues. In Venice, Gagosian is currently helping to support a show by Tatiana Trouv\u00e9 at the Palazzo Grassi, her biggest solo show to date and including sculptures and large-scale drawings. \u201cIt is especially difficult logistically as everything is shipped by boat and you can\u2019t control the height of the water,\u201d Francis says. Morey says Momart is all too familiar with Venice\u2019s \u201ctidal variations\u201d, which mean if the water is too high then shipments don\u2019t fit under bridges; if too low then transport can hit the bottom of the canals. During the city\u2019s prestigious biennale, there\u2019s also the problem that one of its main exhibition areas, the Giardini, \u201cis a garden, you can\u2019t just drive up to the site,\u201d Morey says.Then there\u2019s the cost of it all. Read gives a back-of-the-envelope guess that the value of art shipped around the world amounts to \u201cat least $100bn\u201d annually while shipping costs were found to be a significant portion of gallery expenses in the latest Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report (15 per cent), and with the steepest climb in the past year.\u00a0This is part of the thinking behind a museum-share scheme that Gagosian gallery is organising on behalf of the American artist Jeff Wall, whose large-scale, hyper-real colour transparencies are mounted in light boxes, and who currently has consecutive shows around the world. \u201cAll the shows are separate, but we have organised for about 60 works to travel together each time and the museums can then choose what they want to hang \u2014 while paying about 15 per cent of the transport costs each,\u201d Francis says.Given the inherent risks, there are growing calls for art to travel less, compounded by environmental concerns. \u201cThere is this constant tension between museums being interested in outreach and accessibility while also worrying about their environmental impact. It is increasingly discussed, though I am not sure how it can be resolved,\u201d Bentley says. More eco-friendly packaging is a constructive, \u201cmiddle ground\u201d solution, he says, noting Christie\u2019s Ventures\u2019 recent investment in Rokbox, a reusable shipping crate company.Meanwhile, Morey says, there are more prosaic practicalities that can ease the path of priceless art. A repeated issue, he says, are \u201cpeople who buy [art] without realising that it doesn\u2019t fit through their front door. There are ways around \u2014 craning things over buildings or taking out a window or part of a wall \u2014 but it is always worth checking.\u201dFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Venice water levels, New York road closures and London cranes \u2014 getting art around the world involves some heavy-duty logistics. The sheer number of museum exhibitions, art fairs and auctions means that keeping art on the move, and intact, is a multi-billion-dollar industry.It is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-289157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289159,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289157\/revisions\/289159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}