Atlas Obscura has a cute story about Polish artist Elka Krajewska’s Salvage Art Institute, which collects works art insurers have paid off on as a total loss. The idea is to allow people to interact with de-sanctified works that are no longer works of art:
When the cost to fix a damaged piece (or car) exceeds its perceived worth, or the damage is considered too extensive, the work goes through a total-loss claim. The value of the piece officially becomes zero, and it’s declared “salvage art” by insurers. Some of these salvage works end up on the walls of art insurance offices the world over, but more often they’re stored in warehouses, in a kind of limbo while the insurer figures out if they can be auctioned to make up for some of the paid-out claim. […]Krajewska came up with the idea of creating an institute that would give new life to the forgotten salvage art inventory. When she brought her idea to AXA Art, CEO Christiane Fischer told her she’d been thinking about what to do with total-loss works all her professional life.
Where Damaged Art Goes When It’s Deemed a ‘Total Loss’ (Atlas Obscura)
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