Art Gallery Insurance

We place commercial galleries and dealer spaces. Artist studios that occasionally sell off the wall are a different, smaller file. Museums that accession rather than deal should use the museum page. If you also ship to fairs, the transit and fair-booth story has to be on the same proposal as the walls.

Fine-arts and inland-marine forms do the inventory work that a generic contents limit will not. We want values at the peak of a show, not the average Tuesday, and we want a valuation clause that matches how you actually settle with artists — selling price, net to the artist, or agreed value. Consigned work is a bailee problem. Your contract with the artist is not a substitute for a form that names consigned property. We read both.

Transit and art-fair exposures are where galleries get surprised. A crate in a van, a booth in another city, and a work that sits in a hotel room overnight are off-premises facts. We schedule a floater that follows the work, and we do not rely on a $10,000 off-premises extension inside a BOP. If you use third-party shippers, we still want your form to respond when the shipper’s liability stops at a released value.

Openings are premises and, if you pour, liquor. The landlord will want to be additional insured. Theft, smash-and-grab, and employee dishonesty belong on the application in plain language — galleries are targeted. Cyber matters if you hold collector data and take remote payments. Washington staff stay with L&I; we place stop-gap and competitive-state WC.

Jewelry stores, museums, and specialty retail are the related pages. If jewelry or design objects are a real part of the mix, we schedule them as jewelry or as fine arts, not as “gifts.” If you are a museum shop that also deals, tell us which inventory is accessioned and which is for sale.

Risks we actually schedule

• Damage or theft of owned inventory and consigned work, including off-premises fairs.
• A valuation fight with an artist after a loss because the form and the consignment contract disagree.
• Opening-night premises and liquor claims.
• Transit losses where the shipper’s released value is a fraction of the work.