Art loans and consignment

Most loans and consignments of art are agreed on trust. The museum is reputable, the gallery has sold for you before, and the paperwork is a loan form or an email naming a price. The work then spends months out of your hands — packed, shipped, hung, photographed, shown to buyers — and the questions arrive only when something goes wrong: a frame is cracked on return, the loan is quietly extended, the dealer sells below the agreed price or stops answering, or the gallery closes with your work still in its storeroom.

A carefully drafted loan or consignment agreement answers those questions before the work leaves. It sets out who is responsible for the work at each stage, what the other side may and may not do with it, and how it comes back to you:

• the rules on the length of a loan, on extending it, and on the date and conditions of the work’s return;
• the rules on the borrower’s duty of care, and on recording the state of the work when it leaves and when it comes back;
• the rules on protection from seizure for works lent abroad, and on the guarantees a lender can ask for before a work travels;
• the rules on how a lent work is credited, captioned and reproduced in catalogues and publicity;
• the rules on the dealer’s authority to sell — the minimum price, exclusivity, the period and the markets covered;
• the rules on the dealer’s commission and expenses, and on when the proceeds of a sale must be paid over;
• the rules on keeping consigned works apart from the dealer’s own stock, and on recovering them if the dealer becomes insolvent;
• the rules on ending a loan or a consignment early, and on retrieving a work that has not come back when it should.

Our lawyers can support you with this.