As fires raged across Los Angeles this week, due to the ongoing Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst fires, numerous artists, collectors, and arts professionals have reported losing their homes and art collections in the affected areas. While it is still too early to truly assess the damage, art insurers and conservators told ARTnews that they expect it to be extensive.
“This is going to be substantial and possibly one of the most impactful art losses ever in America,” Simon de Burgh Codrington, fine arts insurance specialist and managing director at Risk Strategies, told ARTnews in a phone interview. The devastating losses, de Burgh Codrington added, are expected “to be much more impactful than Sandy was to the art world.”
Similarly, Christopher Wise, vice president of Risk Strategies, told ARTnews, “There are huge amounts of fine art value under threat at the current moment. Many, many billions of fine art.”
While Risk Strategies insures “many collectors, museums, galleries, artists, and warehouses throughout Los Angeles,” according to Wise, many have already moved artworks into safer locations following evacuation offers. Still, he said, the “destruction is devastating.”
“Our hearts break to hear of the scale of the losses,” Wise said. “We have also been actively reaching out to try and help … As the fires continue to expand and new areas are affected, we continue to communicate and act vigilantly on behalf of our clients.
Huntington T. Block, a leading fine art insurance broker, told ARTnews that it has a “fair number of clients” based in Los Angeles neighborhoods affected by the fires and that several have suffered insured losses, “with some of those losses being considerable.”
Grace Aretsky, a business development manager at HUB International, told ARTnews that the LA area has “an exceedingly high aggregation” of fine art and that the current scale of loss is “catastrophic and calamitous.”
“There is no doubt that insurance companies are bracing themselves for massive fine art claims, but the implications for the broader art ecosystem are unprecedented,” Aretsky said.
Though fire is not often as urgent as water damage, one thing is clear: early and swift action, as in the case of the Getty Villa, is key. Experts urged reliance on art advisors who can guide clients impacted by the fire to appropriate and reputable resources, as well as professional organizations like the American Institute for Conservation.
Some, like Modern Art Conservation owner Suzanne Siano, have already been in touch with tips for affected art collectors hoping to preserve their holdings. While care for each piece can vary greatly, documentation can help the process. There are treatments specific to fire damage like the work conducted by the Moxy Project in Europe or by Siano herself with NASA.
Still many have struggled with insurance coverage and storage efforts, with those working in these industries often personally afflicted themselves.
George Lacovara, the Los Angeles director of art storage and logistics company Gander & White, told ARTnews that the company’s warehouses are “out of the danger zone” and that his team is working “at exceptional pace to assist as the city faces this crisis.”
“Our top priority remains the safety of our team and their families during this unprecedented natural disaster,” Lacovara said. “We are providing support to our clients and have undertaken several successful emergency art extractions, responding swiftly to the threat posed by these fires, drawing on our extensive experience in managing such challenges.”
Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of art logistics company Atelier 4, similarly told ARTnews that while the company’s facility is far from the fires, many of the company’s staff have been directly affected.
“I’ve been at this line of work nearly 4 decades and I don’t recall it ever being this catastrophic so close to central LA,” he said. “We’ve made ourselves available to clients who need emergency assistance but in most cases the roads are not accessible. It’s this way in the east with hurricanes. The call for help is never early enough.”
As for how the disaster will affect insurance coverage or rates, insurers told ARTnews that while its too early to say in specifics, it is likely that rates will rise and new protocols and policies put in place.
HUB’s Aretsky said that the insurance market will likely “harden” as a result of the fires, possibly leading to higher rates across the board, due to reinsurance pricing, or higher rates in “densely aggregated or high-risk zones.” Meanwhile, Risk Strategies’ Wise said he expents underwirting to become “much stricter and more granular” and that people will have to put in place “fire mitigation plans.”
