The Guardian's on yacht art collections gets lots of attention; Derek Fordjour was a later starter; Brook Hazelton advises LiveAuctioneers; Coachella's Desert X brings art to the valley.

This commentary by Marion Maneker is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)

The Perils of Mixing Art and Yachting

We should always apply a healthy dose of skepticism to these newspaper stories pulled from conference presentations when service providers are humble-bragging their practices. But this story that appears in the Guardian and on Bloomberg claiming that many yachts have art worth many times the value of the vessel is just too full of wonderful nonsense not to quote:

• “Tilman Kriesel, founder of an art advisory firm, told the conference one client asked how to display a Rothko that was too tall for a yacht’s grand saloon. “We turned the piece by 90 degrees,” he said. “The artist would probably be turning in his grave, but we took a deep breath and said ‘it’s your painting, do what you like’.”Another of Kriesel’s clients had a piece by the Japanese modern artist Takashi Murakami that he wanted to display in the “beach club” – the rear of superyachts where owners access jet skis and other water toys – but again it was the wrong size. “In the end we cut it up to make it fit,” he said.”

None of these stories of works damaged by children or staff are specific to boats. Art in homes around the world are equally vulnerable to every accident described here. Note too the comment of Helen Robertson, a conservator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, who claims to have worked on a boat “with $450m of works of cultural value on board.”

• “Something people always say to me is ‘why on earth would you carry art on yachts?’,” she said. “But yachts can be very controllable. Systems for temperature and humidity can surpass those you would find in galleries.”