Keeping Track of Your Collection

Many years ago, my wife and I met Mary Anne Goley, director of the Fine Arts Program of the Federal Reserve Board from its creation in 1975 until 2006. Besides caring for and displaying works owned by the Fed, Goley decided early in her career to create exhibitions showcasing the collections of the employees. I would guess there may have been some hesitancy at first but once one or two staff members agreed there were a flood of requests to have their collections shown. She found she had to come up with a prerequisite that I have found to be a useful definition of a collection … at least 20 items in the same category or area.

Once you have 20 to 30 works in your collection, be they old masters, stamps or fountain pens you find you need to organize them and identify each item. With my fountain pen collection this has proved quite an exercise since some pens are unmarked and for some, I need a magnifying glass to read where it might be identified somewhere on the pen. Even if you have your works of art on your walls there may be some in the closet or in a bank vault. At some point you will find yourself asking … Now where did I put that object? What was the name of that artist? Oh, the museum wants that for an exhibition, and I have no idea how the artist titled it?

You need a list, possibly with classifications. In the case of our Native American collection, we started out with albums neatly put together with photos and invoices. As the collection grew, we had to create separate albums for paintings, katsinas, pottery etc.

There are a number of programs out there for doing this. I found one online with a free version with which “to get started” but the subscriptions went up to $147/month! As an art dealer I was paying $99/month for a gallery inventory program but I was certainly not making use of all the possibilities it offered.

You must determine what you actually want to get out of such a program without it being overwhelming. What information do you think you will need to retrieve over time. Now here is a warning: I learned the hard way. With the gallery program I had been using I could have been stuck with it. Why? Because if you cancel you subscription your content disappears at the same time. So theoretically your heirs would also be tied to the program. Then there is always the danger that the company that has come up with the program goes out of business. Buyer beware!

Turns out that there is a very simple answer for most collectors, if not art dealers or museums, and that is to develop a spread sheet. I am not going to tell you that it can do all a software program can do for you, but if you find you need more than the basics you can always add another category column later. The only issue is how to create a spread sheet. I had an associate who was adept at that, but I am sure many of you can accomplish this on your own, and if not, it is not difficult to find someone to set it up for you. I learned to my surprise that you can even add images. After the spread sheet has been created you only have to fill in the blanks but don’t forget to hit “save”. Then you can pick the column, such as artist or location, to get the information you need ... as long, of course, that you entered it in the first place.

By the way, should you be interested, Mary Ann Goley published a book in 2020 called, “Democracy’s Medici: The Federal Reserve and the Art of Collecting”.  I might just order that!