Artwork Loans

We are very experienced in all aspects concerning the handling of works of art in connection with exhibition and loans.  This includes preliminary consultancy on facilities questionnaires and institutional liaison, on environment and display, and on security, access, handling, packing, transport and shipping.  It also includes couriering, condition checking, complex removal and installation, hanging, environmental monitoring.  Over the years Kiffy Stainer-Hutchins has acquired in-depth experience of exhibitions and artwork loans at the following public institutions and private sectors:

• Walters Art Museum Baltimore MD, USA; 1989–1990.  Two incoming international exhibitions from Europe and Japan
• National Museums Liverpool, Merseyside, UK; 1990–1998.  Sixty one incoming national and international exhibitions (including the bi-annual John Moores prize), and over three hundred considerations and preparations of external artwork loans requests to national and international exhibitions elsewhere (approximately one-third of which was managed latterly as Head of Paintings Conservation giving comprehensive input and in-depth advise to curators, registrars and shipping agents); fourteen internal new displays and installations across the five museums and galleries within the group (including two award winning ones at the new Conservation Centre and at the Merseyside Maritime Museum); over thirty national and international courier trips accompanying paintings to most of the world’s leading art institutions throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia, the USSR and Russia.
• National Gallery of Art Washington DC, USA; 1998-2001.  Twenty nine incoming national and international exhibitions involving loans from most of the world’s leading art institutions throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia and Russia; in particular five considerations and preparations of external loan requests and couriering to the exhibition Van Dyck 1599-1641, 15^th May – 15^th August 1999 Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, and 11^th September – 10^th December 1999 Royal Academy of Arts, London; assisting with new installations and condition checking at The White House.

• Private Sector, UK; 2001 – present.  Advising clients and leading institutions on item(s)’ suitability for artwork loans and conditions of lending, as well as preparing items for loan, providing specifications for packing and shipping, couriering and inward and outward condition checking.  Also providing consultancy and management of environmental control and complex installation work overall.  More recently some of these exhibitions have included:

Make Me Think: Bruce Nauman, 19^th May – 28^th August 2006 Tate Liverpool, 14^th October 2006 – 8^th January 2007 MADRE, Naples (involving couriering by air and overland) for the Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica, California, and for the Tate.

Chuck Close: Seven Portraits, 28^th February – 13^th April 2008, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, (including couriering 8 massive paintings over land and sea) for the National Gallery of Art Washington DC and White Cube London.

Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, 15thOctober 2009 – 3^rd January 2010 Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 6^th March 2010 – 4^th July 2010 Victoria & Albert Museum, London, for the Marquis of Cholmondeley and for the V&A.

Edward Burne Jones – The Earthly Paradise, 24^th October 2009 – 7^th February 2010 Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, 19^th March 2010 – 25^th July 2010 Kunstmuseum, Bern, (including couriering 2 works overland and by air) for the Marquis of Cholmondeley.

Art of Faith, 2^nd October 2010 – 23^rd January 2011, Castle Museum, Norwich, Norfolk, for Viscount Coke and NMAS.

Art Under Attack: A History of British Iconoclasm, 30^th September 2013 – 5^th January 2014, Tate Britain, London, for the Tate and for the Norwich DAC.

Houghton Revisited, 17^th May – 25^th November 2013, Houghton Hall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, (including all aspects of this major once-in-a life-time exhibition on our doorstep and for one of our most important clients) for the Marquis of Cholmondeley in conjunction with the State Hermitage Museum St Petersburg.

Masterpieces; Art and East Anglia, 14^th September 2013 – 24^th February 2014, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, for the Marquis of Cholmondeley and Norwich Cathedral.

As well as liaison and close connects with the many institutions and major collections indicated here, we are also well known to a number of specialist shipping and art transport agents world wide.  These include Momart PLC (UK), Martinspeed Ltd (UK), Constantine Ltd (UK), Dietl Internatinal Services (US), Masterpiece International Ltd (US), Hasenkamp Internationale Transporte GmbH (DE), Khepri Ltd (RU), Helu-Trans PLC (SG), Yamato Transport Co Ltd (JP).