The Artist Pension Trust (APT), a financial services, art lending, and management company which aims to provide retirement security for artists, will begin the first-ever sales of its massive 10,000-work collection, starting in September. All of the art world will be closely watching to see whether this model — and its first major test of the art market — will work.
“After ten years, we are feeling that the timing is right to start slowly and carefully selling the collection,” cofounder and chairman Moti Shniberg told ARTINFO. A sales team and sales committee will decide which artworks to sell and at what time. “We are going to give priority to institutions for the obvious reasons,” he explained. “We believe it's better — for the participating artists — to place works carefully.” In September, the trust plans to launch a new website with details of the works for sale.
At the same time, Shniberg emphasizes that it is not a fire sale. The works will be sold gradually, and at the same time, they will be acquiring pieces by other artists in the collection. He says that it plans to add 500 artists to the Trust in the next year alone.
Current participating artists include several former Turner Prize winners, Richard Wright, Susan Philipsz, and Martin Boyce. Roughly two-dozen APT artists are included in the current Venice Biennale, including three artists who received special mentions: Roberto Cuoghi; Gabriel Lester; and Koki Tanaka. Prices for works that APT will sell range from a few thousand dollars into the six figures.
Unlike other art collections formed with an eye toward appreciation — or the numerous art investment funds that seem to disappear as quickly as they crop up — the Artist Pension Trust appears to have a careful and well thought-out strategy that has at least some built-in protection for market volatility. And unlike other pools of artwork formed for investment, its methodology appears to extend far beyond speculation.
Founded in 2003 by Shniberg, economist Dan Galai, and former Whitney and SFMOMA director David Ross, APT is a long-term investment program whereby selected artists provide 20 artworks — subject to approval — over a 20-year period. APT stores the works, which are made available for exhibition loans, until the time that they are sold. Notably, “the artist remains the sole owner of his or her artworks until the work is sold,” according to APT’s website.
When artworks are sold, each artist receives 40 percent of the net proceeds of the sale of the work, 32 percent of net proceeds accrue to the collective benefit of all participating artists in the specific trust (each trust has 250 artists). “This allows each participating artist to collectively participate in the commercial success of the other 249 artists,” says Shniberg. The remaining 28 percent of the net proceeds are retained by APT to cover all management and operating costs.
Shniberg says the APT accepts only 5 percent of the artists who apply (region-specific curatorial committees decide on acceptance), and that the size of the collection by the current crop of 1,800 artists, will eventually grow to about 40,000 works based on the 20-works-per-artist guideline.
At the same time, APT is announcing two new initiatives, including the non-profit APT Institute, an organization designed for curators, museums, and art organizations worldwide, to help facilitate exhibitions and loans, as well as a new “Concierge” service designed to connect curators to the artists in the APT collection that they are interested in, including organizing visits to studios practically anywhere in the world.
Recent loans arranged through the APT institute include Jean Shin’s installation of neckties and a chain link fence, “Untied” (2000), which featured in the solo show “Jean Shin: Common Threads,” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (which closed July 26), and Sherif El-Azma’s “Powerchord Skateboard,” 2007, a two-screen DVD installation that was part of the Tate Modern’s recent show “Project Space: Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.”
Coinciding with the Frieze Art Fair this fall in London, the APT Institute is partnering with the London-based Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation to present a group exhibition of Japanese contemporary art, “Acting Out of Nothingness,” featuring works from the APT collection.