An ISA Member in the Far East

Khadinn Khan, ISA AM

I was the Chief Claims Adjuster and Risk Surveyor for AXA ART, the global art insurance specialist, in Asia, when I applied for ISA membership in 2016.

Art insurance is still a developing business in the region, where more collection owners or custodians elect to self-insure rather than taking up specialist coverage. I worked with a small team at AXA ART and was the only member with adequate art knowledge, therefore, I was tasked with the responsibility of verifying and approving the sum insured (on agreed value basis) of artworks proposed by brokers and clients on their insurance policies. People began to approach us with items which they thought were of high worth and wanted to insure, including items purchased many years ago or passed down to the family, and expected us to provide a solution or referral for valuation. These requests were particularly common when I was conducting risk surveys at clients’ homes. After a while, it became apparent that if I could add art appraisal expertise to my skill set, it would help to progress my career.

There are a very low number of professional art appraisers in Asia due to lack of demand. In Hong Kong, we have a low tax rate and a simple tax system that provides no tax relief for charitable donations, except for cash contributions. Additionally, estate duty has been abolished, so neither estate duty accounts nor clearance papers need to be filed. With no governmental requirements for appraisal, there is simply limited demand to support professional appraisal businesses. At the same time, China and Hong Kong have emerged dramatically as an art market and are now considered the world’s second largest, according to The Art Market 2018 report published by Art Basel and UBS. The lack of professional art appraisal service is hindering the growth of other financial services, such as art insurance and art-backed loans.

There is clearly enormous potential for appraisers in Asia, but what convinced me to obtain a formal education in art appraisal was my personal involvement in a unique damage claim.

Hong Kong Harborfront © Art Basel 

An auction house client reported a claim for damage to a Song dynasty ceramic vase that was on consignment to them. The damage was a hairline crack to the edge of the base. In these situations, restoration may not be the best option, as the market preference is to avoid alteration on minor damage. We agreed with the client and consignor to settle on a diminution of value basis. As there was no qualified appraiser available to take up the assignment, and because of an urgency to settle the claim, all parties agreed to a proposal of having two antique dealers inspect the damaged vase. Each dealer would separately suggest the percentage loss in value, then we would use the mean as the basis of settlement. In the end, both dealers came up with the exact same extreme percentage, which took everyone by surprise. They did not provide any reasoning or justification of their valuation, and were not obligated to. We had no option but to settle the claim accordingly. This experience motivated me to source an independent, transparent appraisal process for future claims in order to leave no party confused or suspicious. My research subsequently led me to ISA.

Attending ISA courses in Naperville turned out to be one of the best decisions I made for my career. First of all, it was achievable. I was able to start from scratch and complete the Core Course, the 15 Hour USPAP course and Fine Art course in three weeks. The courses were well structured, with visits to art museums and a printmaking studio. The classroom discussions were particularly lively and often based on real-life examples shared by fellow colleagues encountered in their daily businesses.

Coming home with my new credential, I was determined to spread the word and do what was necessary to promote good appraisal practices with the goal of raising overall personal property appraisal standards in the region. Using knowledge I gained through my ISA education, I was able to educate industry professionals and art collectors. I informed bankers and insurance professionals on what USPAP is and asked them to consider USPAP-compliant reports only for their insurance policies or lending out loans. For art collectors, I promote periodic appraisal as part of a good collection management program, together with a robust inventory system, maintaining good documentation of provenance and purchase records, a secure display/storage environment, and adequate insurance coverage. My message is that an appraisal report is essential for accounting and estate planning purposes, or if one wishes to secure loans using their art collection as collateral.

Lecture at Art Taipei Forum 2017

My ISA education helped me a great deal in improving communication with our claimants. Although I would not perform appraisal on damage claims that I directly handle, I could use my knowledge to guide loss adjusters to look for the correct data and comparables, seek opinions from the right experts to determine the settlement offer amount, as well as make sure their communication with the client is clear and appropriate. I demand that the loss adjusters demonstrate clearly how they arrive at the settlement offer. There are always brokers or clients who are dissatisfied with the offers, yet there has never been any complaint on the communication or lack of transparency since. Also, we’ve seen a significant drop in claim disputes for my department and my company was able to highlight our claims service as a selling point for our insurance products. I’ve also noticed in places where there is no local law governing personal property appraisal, highlighting USPAP and the ISA Code of Ethics always provide confidence to clients in knowing that the appraisals are being conducted in a responsible manner.

I would advise fellow appraisers living outside of the USA to try to attend courses on site or attend the ISA annual conference, Assets. One can feel isolated sometimes due to having few peers in the market, and for our profession, it is important to build a network of experts of different backgrounds and knowledge. Attending ISA courses or the Annual Conference is a great way to tap into the vast experience of fellow appraisers, and from my experience, they are always happy to share.

- Khadinn Khann, ISA AM, is an appraiser based on Hong Kong and has been a member of ISA since 2016. To learn more about ISA membership, visit the ISA website.

The Fine Art Specialty Tour at Assets 2018

Irene Szylinger, ISA AM

With the holidays behind us, I am getting very excited about our annual conference, Assets, coming up March 9-12 in Pasadena, California. Be sure to register if you haven't already! The specialty tours at Assets always provide a wonderful taste of our host city, and on our Fine Art tour in Pasadena on Friday, March 9, we will visit two outstanding institutions. There will be something for everyone when we view the art collections, grounds and libraries at the Huntington and the Norton Simon Museum.

The Huntington, where we will go first, has a long and respected reputation. Established by Henry E. Huntington in 1919, the institution is a non-profit educational and research-based complex comprising a library, art collection, and botanical gardens.

In the Library, the general public can view some of the finest rare books and manuscripts of Anglo-American civilization, including the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a Gutenberg Bible on vellum, the double-elephant folio edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, and a world-class collection of the early editions of Shakespeare’s works.

Thomas Lawrence,
Sarah Barrett Moulton: Pinkie (1794)

The Huntington's permanent art collections are displayed in three galleries while a fourth space is dedicated to changing exhibitions. The collections focus on European art from the 15th to the early 20th century and American art from the late 17th to the mid-20th century. The Huntington Art Gallery, originally the Huntington residence, contains one of the most comprehensive collections in the US of 18th and 19th century British and French art. It serves as home to Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and Thomas Lawrence’s Pinkie.

After an orientation talk about the Huntington, we will be divided into groups. Each of the groups will have two fine art talks based on the vast Huntington collections. Afterwards, we will have some free time to visit parts of the collections on our own before we depart for lunch.

Thanks to ISA member Wendy Gerdau, lunch has been arranged at The Raymond, a charming restaurant in the craftsman architecture style filled with California plein-air art offering 4-star Zagat-rated cuisine. ISA Fine Art and AFDA members will have the exclusive use of the entire restaurant.

After lunch, we'll head to the Norton Simon Museum. The Norton Simon came into existence in 1941 as the Pasadena Art Institute before it merged with the Pasadena Museum of Art. In 1953, the Museum received nearly 500 artworks from the Scheyer estate, including works by German Expressionists Kandinsky, Klee, Jawlensky, Feininger and others. The gift not only included art works but an archive of correspondence with the artists. In the 1960s, the Museum added works by Larry Bell, Richard Diebenkorn, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol.

Norton Simon collections featuring
Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen by Edgar Degas

Norton Simon’s activity as a collector spanned more than 30 years and encompassed the purchase of more than 8,000 works of art during his lifetime. Today, the collection is comprised of about 12,000 objects, including the only painting by Raphael on the west coast, three portraits by Rembrandt, six superb paintings by Van Gogh, over one hundred works by Degas, an important collection of Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture that spans over 2500 years, and other superlative works.

At the Norton Simon we have a custom-designed tour of the Degas as Sculptor exhibition. Towards the end of the presentation, the exhibition’s curator, Emily Talbot, will address our whole group. While we are at the Norton Simon, we are free to visit the special Rembrandt exhibition as well as the permanent collections on view.

I can't wait to see all of you at Assets!

Irene Szylinger, ISA AM, is a specialist in American, Canadian and European art from the 19th century to the present. She spent over twenty-five years working in museums and art galleries, and is now principal of an arts management and appraisal business as well as a provider of Public Art Commissions. She has been an accredited member of ISA since 1997.

Why Take a Course on Japanese Prints?

Daphne L. Rosenzweig, ISA CAPP 

It’s not too late to join my two-day seminar, “The Appraisal of Japanese Prints” to be held in Sarasota, Florida, June 19-20, 2017. The course introduces the important cultural, historical, stylistic, technical and valuation factors that affect the appraisal of 17th to 21st century Japanese prints. As an author of numerous publications, frequent lecturer, museum consultant, and organizer of traveling exhibitions, my work in the field of Asian art has allowed me to build a wealth of knowledge around appraising Japanese prints that I am looking forward to sharing with all my students.

It's common for appraisers to come across Japanese prints during the course of a general appraisal of household contents, an estate division, insurance scheduling or intended donation. After taking my course, students will be well-equipped to offer their professional opinion on these items as necessary.

During our in-classroom days on June 19 and 20, we'll examine important provenances, influential designers and designs, formats, structures, major narratives, and condition factors, always with an eye as to how these factors affect the value of an individual print. Both new and experienced appraisers will find a perfect combination of connoisseurship and practical market experience in this engaging seminar.

Some of the questions this course will answer include:

• How can you differentiate heroes from villains, men from women? 
• How has the West influenced Japanese prints, and what has the West learned from those prints? 
• Who are the most important artists?
• How do you detect and what do you do about reproductions?

Don’t forget there will be an additional field trip day on June 21, where I will be leading a tour of the fabulous collection of traditional and modern Japanese woodblock prints at The Ringling Museum of Art.

For a preview of what we'll learn in this seminar, The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, has wonderful video documentation on the making of a Japanese print. You can view each section at your own speed. I'm looking forward to seeing you in June!

- Daphne L. Rosenzweig, ISA CAPP

The Top 7 Reasons to Take a Course on Chinese Decorative Arts

Susan Lahey, MA, ISA AM

This summer, I have the pleasure of teaching a course for ISA on Chinese decorative arts from the ancient to the contemporary.

The course takes place June 21-23 in Sarasota, Florida, with a field trip day scheduled at the beginning of the course followed by two in-classroom days. The course will help appraisers become familiar with a wide range of Chinese decorative arts, including jades, bronzes, snuff bottles, cloisonné, ivories, textiles, lacquerware, and ceramics. Context and history are key elements of the course, as we will discuss how Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism shaped the aesthetics of Chinese art, how the decorative arts evolved through dynastic and Imperial Chinese history, and what the current art market looks like and how to identify fakes. 

If you haven’t registered for the course yet, sign up on the ISA website!

A decorative jade vessel

On the course’s field trip day, participants will take a special tour of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, as there are two special exhibitions visiting there in June. The first is Eternal Offerings: Chinese Ritual Bronzes from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, showcasing nearly 100 Chinese bronze objects used to conduct religious rituals, record significant events, and represent elite status from the Shan through Han dynasties (1600 BCE to 220 CE). We will also visit the exhibition Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, an outdoor collection of 12 bronze sculptures by one of the most renowned Chinese sculptors and installation artists, Ai Weiwei. 

Ai Weiwei's Zodiac Heads

In addition to these two special exhibitions, we will also visit the newly-opened Center for Asian Art at the Ringling, which permanently houses more than 2,000 examples of Chinese ceramics and traces the history of Asian art and culture from the Mediterranean and Eurasia to the New World through the Silk Road and trade development. Objects in this collection emphasize the dialogue between the ancient and the contemporary in Chinese art, such as a 19th century limestone scholar’s rock flanked opposite Zhan Wang’s 21st century stainless-steel Artificial Rock #124.  

Dragon detail from porcelain object

Don’t miss your opportunity to take a tour of outstanding collections of art and develop a strong knowledge base around Chinese decorative arts. 

With that, I present to you:

The Top 7 Reasons to Take a Course on Chinese Decorative Arts

1. Have the opportunity to handle bronzes, jades, textiles, ceramics, cloisonné and more examples of Chinese decorative arts
2. Learn strategies for identifying fakes
3. Understand how Chinese art and philosophy impacted Western art
4. Enhance your appraisal and research skills through learning about resources, dealers and the current market and collecting trends
5. Learn about manufacture techniques for good, better, best distinctions in all media
6. Broaden your horizons. As they say, “Every generalist appraiser should also develop a specialty.”
7. Connect with appraisal colleagues while in sunny Florida!

What are you waiting for? Sign up for the course today!

Scholarships for ISA’s education courses are available through the Foundation for Appraisal Education, with applications due May 1. There is also a $200 discount available for those who register for both the Chinese Decorative Arts course and the Appraisal of Japanese Prints course in Sarasota this summer. Contact ISA headquarters at 312.981.6778 to receive this discount or for more information.

- Susan Lahey, MA, ISA AM

Expanding Your Comparables Resources: A Fresh Look at Sources

By Suzanne Houck, ISA CAPP

If you’re like me, you often get stuck in a rut with your tried-and-true comparable research sites. Lately, I’ve been expanding my resources, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few of my finds with you. Some may be familiar yet forgotten. Others, hopefully, will be new and helpful additions to your bank of research sites.

Everything But the House (EBTH)
This is a full service online estate sale model for everything in the home but the house (hence the name!). It provides photos, and active and realized prices from estate sales around the country. It is searchable by region, category, and can be filtered/sorted by best match or prices high to low. And… it’s free!

If your appraisal services include consultations for selling items but not actual brokering (including estate sales), this might be a good resource to share with your client. They handle sorting, cataloging, photographing, payment, pickup and delivery.

Barnebys
An online auction platform similar to Live Auctioneers, Barnebys has realized prices. You can submit an item for what they call a “free appraisal,” which goes to participating auction houses (and consequently provides you with an auction estimate rather than an appraisal). Like EBTH, this is free.

Bidsquare
An online auction site with live auctions and past auction prices, this free service includes a sortable search function.

Bidsquare was launched with six renowned auction houses (Brunk Auctions, Cowan’s, Leslie Hindman, Pook & Pook, Rago, Skinner) who joined forces to provide buyers, sellers and auction houses with a place to sell high quality items. Many of their specialists are Roadshow experts; perhaps you’ve even met a few of them. I have found sales on Bidsquare that were not on Live Auctioneers, even in the case of auction houses that are represented on both sites. I’d advise checking both sites for comparables.

the saleroom
An online auction site similar to Live Auctioneers, this site is entirely searchable, has realized prices and photos (particularly of Asian items) and has a nominal fee for use.

Applications (Apps) available through your smartphones, tablets, and iPads
There are plenty of Classified Ad-type apps that may prove helpful when determining regional and local asking prices for more depreciable items commonly found in the home (washers, golf clubs, dishes, etc.). For those of you who don’t have time or desire to frequent garage and estate sales and want to see more searchable classified ads, complete with photos and asking prices, consider the following apps:

Trove Marketplace: A place to buy and sell. For sellers it has a unique social feature, in which viewers can vote between two items that developers claim helps with future pricing.

Close 5: Great for reviewing asking prices for ordinary household items. Prices included on photos for easy viewing. No prices realized.

Offer Up: “Buy. Sell. Simple.” Requires clicking on the photos to see the asking price. No prices realized.

Letgo: “Buy and sell used stuff.” A Craig-classified sales (as in Craigslist). Not as easily searchable as the others, in my opinion.

I hope you find even a few of these resources useful. If you know of others, please share them in the comments. And if this subject interests, you be sure to attend the ISA Conference, “The Architecture of Appraising,” slated for March 31-April 3 in Chicago. Pip Deeley, author of How Data Will Keep Transforming the Art Business, will be presenting “Remodeling Business for the Future: Utilizing New Tools of Technology,” covering a range of topics from apps for image capture, collection management, the impact and potential of price data, and the latest developments in 3D scanning, virtual reality and visualization. We’ll see you there!

Asian Art II: Asian Paintings and Screens

By Daphne Lange Rosenzweig, Ph.D, ISA CAPP

Why can an accompanying box be an important value determinant?

What’s authentically "Coromandel," and what’s "Coromandel style?"

When are three seasons or seven horses just not enough?

How can inscribed dates be identified and translated?

Who are the heroes and who are the villains?

Where are the markets?

These are just a few of the questions we aim to tackle in "Asian Art II: Asian Paintings and Screens," the two-day (plus field trip day) seminar slated for August 1-3. This course will introduce factors which influence appropriate, defensible appraisals of East Asian (China, Korea, Japan) and Tibetan paintings and screens.

These factors include the data appraisers routinely note (country, title if specified, artist’s name if given, date, medium, dimensions, condition, provenance when known, description of composition, etc.), while also considering details specific to works from these regions. Themes, formats, the role of seals and colophons, the function of the work and other issues which clearly differentiate East Asian and Tibetan paintings and screens from those produced elsewhere in the world will be illustrated.

Though there are many shared characteristics among the paintings of these four areas, there are some strongly individual national characteristics as well. An appraiser must be aware of these, as certain clients can be passionate about heritage issues, themes and styles that are unique to each of these four specific cultures.

The markets for paintings from each of these areas are also very specific. This seminar introduces relevant cultural, historical and restoration issues, as well as typical subjects and symbol systems. Current market conditions will also be explored.

Even though Asian paintings and screens are lifelong studies—and it is often necessary and wise for appraisers to consult expert opinions—at the end of two days, appraisers should know where to begin when confronted with such works. The course is designed to reduce angst and increase confidence!

Students will be asked to print out several information pages from the web to bring to class. They are also invited to bring a relevant item (in digital format) they've encountered in an appraisal, to be discussed with the class as time permits. Worksheets, as well as a guidebook, will be distributed and utilized.

Note: These images, courtesy of a private foundation and a collector, will be discussed in the seminar.