Museum Insurance

We place small and mid-size museums, historic houses that operate as museums, and science or local-history institutions that are still commercial, admitted accounts. We do not write traveling blockbuster tours as a surprise add-on, and we do not hide a large outdoor festival inside “education programming.” If you are an art gallery that sells work, use the gallery page. If you accession, exhibit, and educate, you are here.

Collections coverage is a scheduled or blanket fine-arts form with loaned-object and transit grants that match how you actually borrow. Wall-to-wall coverage on a incoming loan, a nail-to-nail transit wording, and a realistic valuation method (agreed value versus current market) are the conversations that prevent a claim from becoming an appraisal fight. We ask for the collections policy you already give lenders, and we match the insurance to that document instead of inventing a limit in a vacuum.

The building is often the second-largest number on the statement of values and the one most likely to be wrong. Historic masonry, a sprinkler system that was retrofitted badly, and ordinance-or-law on a partial loss are property facts. Business income and extra expense decide whether you reopen after a water loss in the galleries. We schedule the gift shop and the cafe as the retail and limited-cooking exposures they are, not as a footnote.

Visitor injury, school-group supervision, and volunteer labor are the GL story. If you serve wine at openings, liquor liability belongs on the file. Directors and officers coverage protects a board that makes accession and deaccession decisions in public. Washington staff stay with L&I; we place stop-gap and competitive-state WC. Volunteers are not automatically “employees” on a private WC form — we say so, and we schedule volunteer accident when it is the right tool.

Art galleries, associations, and private schools are the related pages. A museum that also runs a school program or a membership society should still start here so the collection is not an afterthought on a school or association form.

Risks we actually schedule

• Damage, theft, or mysterious disappearance of owned or loaned collection objects.
• A historic-building water or fire loss with ordinance-or-law rebuild cost.
• Visitor and school-group injury in galleries, stairs, and on grounds.
• Board-level accession, employment, or donor disputes.