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December 25, 2006

Off the wall | Whitney Art Works creates a museum-quality storage space to keep fine art safe from fire, theft and other hazards

By Brendan Hughes

In a 4,000-square-foot space behind its new gallery, the second in Portland for the growing art services firm, Whitney Art Works is building a museum-quality art storage facility. When finished (about half of the storage space is ready for occupancy while contractors are working on the rest) it could hold hundreds of paintings and sculptures in a secure, climate-controlled environment.

Peter Whitney, one of the firm's founders, says he intends to meet the highest industry standards for art storage. Protecting paintings from excessive temperatures and humidity — two factors that can destroy a painting — is as important as preventing theft, he says. And despite Maine's many museums and galleries, he says, no other firm offers secure storage services. "I've seen some of the [other moving and storage] companies… and some of this stuff is open, or in bins or in open cages and just sort of locked," Whitney says.

By offering an alternative, Whitney is hoping to find customers among art collectors, gallery owners, artists and museum curators, while expanding Whitney Art Works' gallery and art transportation businesses into the bigger, "art services" market. "Art services is a big umbrella where we can offer storage, installation [and] transport," says Whitney.

Tom Denenberg, chief curator at the Portland Museum of Art, believes Whitney's service is a missing piece of the Maine art market. As is policy with most art museums, the Portland Museum of Art does not discuss its art storage plans, but Denenberg says high-end infrastructure could be a boon to artists, collectors and galleries. "Northern New England needs more fine arts storage," he says. "You would have to go to Boston for the best art storage, and that's two hours away. It's better for museums in Maine to have it here and for private clients as well."

A place to park your painting
Peter and Deb Whitney founded Whitney Art Works seven years ago in eastern Long Island, N.Y., specializing in art transportation and exhibition installation. In 2003, the Whitneys moved to Maine and established an art transportation and installation business on York Street in Portland, along with a gallery that sells contemporary art.

While New York City remains the capitol of the art world, Maine, like eastern Long Island, has long been a seasonal home to private art collectors and museums like the Farnsworth in Rockland and the Bates College Museum of Art, which make up most of the clients for Whitney's local transportation business. Whitney also has clients in New York, often shipping pieces there from Portland. "There's all [the local] people, and then there are people in New York who say 'Whitney Art Works, they're the one up in northern New England,'" says Whitney. (For more on Whitney's art transportation operation, see 'Highway Safety', below.)

Whitney soon realized that there wasn't much competition in the Portland art services industry and began planning a storage facility. That business didn't take shape until this fall, when Whitney Art Works purchased the Kimball Court space — around 3,000 sq. ft. on the ground level, with an additional 1,500 sq. ft. in the basement for all-purpose storage — for just under $500,000. Whitney has invested an additional $50,000 to bring it up to museum standards, which includes adding a high-powered de-humidifier to the climate-control system, a security system and building out the gallery space.

Whitney plans to market the storage service to private collectors, particularly those with seasonal homes in Maine. "A lot of the museums that we do transportation work for were saying that collectors were coming to them and saying, 'Gee, would you like to borrow this painting for the winter while I'm back in London?'" Whitney says. "They were just trying to get it stored for the winter at the museumÂ… and a lot of these museums are really at a premium themselves for storage space."

Most museums, he says, prefer to keep their collections stored on museum property, but Whitney hopes museums would use his facility to store traveling exhibitions. He's already held informal discussions on the subject with a few area curators. "[Museums] have to have a place to open it up, do condition reports and all the sort of physical registrarial things with the exhibition as it comes in," Whitney says. "That's what we've talked to them about doing here."

Right now, the storage facility doesn't look like much more than a cavernous room with a large climate-control unit hanging from the ceiling, but Peter Whitney hopes to build smaller cubicle-like spaces inside for individual clients. "I foresee three or four smaller rooms [within the storage space]," Whitney says. "If somebody wants to take a room and sign a long-term contract with us, we'll put down carpet. And believe me, I've really seen people make [their storage space] like a home away from home. You can send a staff person to work there, you can have a phone line put in."

The larger storage rooms could be leased at $3 per sq. ft., while collectors who want to store only one or two pieces would be charged a monthly minimum between $50 and $75. Whitney estimates the space will bring in around $4,000 a month when fully leased, but he also expects the facility to complement services Whitney already offers. For example, Whitney Art Works currently is storing a 20-foot container of fine art from Germany for a summer resident who has left Maine. Along with storage, Whitney says, comes a charge for transportation. "It's not just storage, it's high-service storage," he says.

Sensing danger
Security is among Whitney's biggest concerns at his new storage facility. "In storage, as well as [in transportation] you need to have multi-layered security," he says. Although Whitney would not disclose the details of the security system, he says the storage space, which adjoins the gallery, will have a separate alarm system and each Whitney employee will have a different access code. Sensors for motion, temperature and humidity also feed into the security system's central reporting station, which will alert both Whitney and the Portland Police Department in the event of a security or environmental problem. "We call it my ability to sleep at night," Whitney says.

Fire — and the smoke and water damage that often comes with it — is another potential hazard Whitney had to address when constructing the storage facility. Recently, devastating fires in a London art warehouse and a more minor incident at a Boston facility resulted in millions of dollars worth of damage, and in both cases the fires began in adjoining buildings.

Whitney's storage space has condominiums above and a restaurant next door. But Whitney says he is confident in the security and environmental precautions taken. "I recognize that this is inside of a bigger buildingÂ… but we've got concrete walls, terrazzo floors, no wood, just metals in the construction."

That confidence is evidenced by the Whitneys' plan to use the space to hold works they will sell in the gallery and possibly as a "layover" space for pieces en route to museums or other galleries. But exactly how the finished facility will be used and what form it takes ultimately will depend on demand from the museums, collectors or galleries that lease space in it. "Some people want to have rooms really tight, some want it open with a table," Whitney says. "So we're giving them an option to have a tight storage space, and they can work in here in privacy. It's a neutral, secure space."

Highway safety

Although fine art storage is the newest venture for Whitney Art Works, secure art transportation remains the company's biggest moneymaker, says co-owner Peter Whitney, though he declines to provide revenue figures. For the last three years, Whitney has operated a twice monthly "art shuttle" that hauls paintings between Portland and New York, most recently in a new truck that features an alarm system, air-ride suspension and humidity control especially for fine art cargo.

It can be a grueling routine. For security reasons, most museums require paintings be delivered the same day they are shipped, a policy reinforced by the November 7 theft of a Goya painting from an art shipper's truck parked overnight at a motel in Pennsylvania. For Whitney, that can mean long days on the road and arriving at museums after hours to deliver a painting, but it also means charging a higher fee for his service.
Security also requires other special procedures. "A lot of it is discretion," Whitney says, noting that his truck bears no overt markings that might suggest its cargo, "but you're exposed when you're out there in the truck."

Discretion includes forgoing the free advertising opportunity presented by the sides of the company truck. "If you saw my old truck, it said 'Whitney Art Works Transportation' in big letters on the side," Whitney says. "Now the truck I have just says 'WAW LLC.'"
Brendan Hughes

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