Art is made to be lived with. There are myriad issues to contend with, however, when installing and caring for a work in your home, from framing, security and insurance to those moments when you need to call in the specialists – to repair a torn canvas, perhaps, or remove cornflakes from your Jean-Michel Basquiat.
According to Pandora Mather-Lees, an art historian and conservator, the first thing a collector should do is create and maintain a catalogue of their pieces. “If a work is catalogued from the outset, with all the data and images that go with it, you are starting off on the right foot. And if something gets damaged or stolen, having good records means insurance companies will look more favourably on you.”
For some collectors, such as Valeria Napoleone, living with art is paramount. Since she began collecting 25 years ago, Napoleone has amassed 450 works, chiefly by women artists, many of which are now in her seven-storey Georgian townhouse in Kensington, London. It took nine years to gut and rebuild the property, in a renovation primarily intended to create the perfect blank canvas to showcase her collection. The end result is superb.
“I was looking at how to elevate a domestic setting into a space to exhibit art without losing that sense of warmth and feeling of being at home,” Napoleone says. She started with the lighting, keeping it soft, and chose pietra serena, a grey sandstone widely used in Renaissance Florence, for the grand staircase. The artist Mika Tajima came up with the idea of building alcoves into the walls. “We’ve installed works of various sizes into these niches, which are lit,” Napoleone says. “As you walk up the stairs, you have intimate encounters with the works, without exposing them to being scratched or damaged.”
Lobbies and hallways are obvious spaces to display statement pieces. Napoleone has taken this one step further, turning the entrance to her house into a white cube-shaped gallery, devoid of furniture. “It sets the tone that this is the home of an art collector,” she says. Much of her contemporary sculpture is installed on the floor instead of on plinths. “I don’t want to put it on a pedestal. My kids have been incredible – they’ve never damaged anything.”
Kate Bryan, the arts broadcaster and head of collections at Soho House, agrees that collections can be made child-friendly. “Art is more robust than you might think, but it’s obviously better to be safe than sorry,” she advises. “Canvases shouldn’t be placed anywhere someone might lean their body or an object against them. Framed works are the simplest way to go in kitchens and play areas, so dirty fingerprints and the odd projected yoghurt can be wiped away.”
Specialist solutions such as sealed microclimate frames can help in challenging environments – even bathrooms. Tru Vue’s Optium frames are relatively affordable at about £1,000 for a modest-sized two-dimensional work. Mather-Lees, however, advises only installing less valuable pieces such as photography or prints in wet or steamy rooms: “I would say, have the least valuable works in your bathroom, and be aware that they are going to deteriorate if you don’t have proper ventilation.”
If food or drink is spilled on a work, it’s best to leave any cleaning to the experts, and to make sure staff know not to use cleaning products on art or museum glass, as this will create smears that are almost impossible to remove. Similarly, bleach is corrosive on alabaster and marble, while silver is particularly soft and malleable, and therefore vulnerable. In one extreme case, Mather-Lees was asked by a client to restore a Basquiat painting on his superyacht that had been splattered with breakfast cereal. “The crew had made the damage worse by wiping the cornflakes off,” she recalls.
The display of digital art presents other challenges. Tablets, laptops and smart TVs can easily be used, but more sophisticated digital picture frames are also available. Specialist David Fox of the New York-based Stonefox architecture practice creates “a small mock-up for the collector to see the intent and sign off on it” prior to installation. “Having a digital artwork completely integrated into the architecture can have a big impact, but it will take a team of professionals to make it happen.”
Whatever the collection, Mather-Lees says the most important thing to remember is “awareness… Art is the only appreciating asset, apart from the house itself. So it is important to have that awareness, to have that appreciation and to be trained in the care of your collection.” And, as Napoleone would stress, to enjoy it.
Pictures from top: Valeria Napoleone in her Kensington home; Banksy’s 2004 work Girl with Balloon (Colour APGold) above a fireplace (Maddox Gallery); a double-height reception room by Stonefox Architects provides the perfect backdrop for statement artworks; a striking modern home in Palm Beach, Florida, with the clients’ art collection at the centre of the design
