The Gallery’s Insurance and Your Work

1. Gallery 97 doesn’t have any ownership interest in pieces on consignment, which means that it doesn’t have an insurable interest in your work. One cannot legally insure somebody else's property.

2. When a gallery owner says that the gallery has insurance, what they're really saying is that if something happens (a fire?), then they (the gallery) have liability insurance. Gallery 97 does have that in place through Western Dakota Insurers in Spearfish.

3. However, our insurance agent, Terry Caudill, strongly recommends that artists put a rider on their homeowner insurance for each of the individual pieces, which is a relatively inexpensive thing to do (about $30 a year per $10,000).

4. Most of our artists are surprised when they hear that we cannot specifically insure their work, but when they check with other galleries, they find that this is correct. It may take the galleries a day or two to give an answer, as they often seem blissfully unaware of the nature of insurable interest until they check with their own agents.

5. The only way an artist would recover through a gallery’s general liability insurance is if the fire or other catastrophe was a direct result of an employee’s or owner’s negligence. (We do have that coverage.)

6. The question of value is a difficult one in the art world. Is a chair worth $500 because it’s functional and aesthetically pleasing, or is it worth $5,000 because the artist feels that it is? Once purchased, a value has been established, but until then each piece would need to be appraised individually to establish its value, and appraisals are costly. On the other hand, if the artist has a rider on a homeowner policy, he/she can specify the amount of the rider and that immediately establishes the value, so generally no appraisal is required.