To highlight the growing demand for transparency and data in the opaque industry, art appraiser Winston Art Group and art technology company Artory merged to form Winston Artory Group (WAG), a new company offering artwork evaluation, consulting, consulting, digital collection management services.
The company said the merger was backed by a strategic investment led by Strobe Ventures, supported by a family office of CMT Digital, Galaxy Digital and Eijk van Otterloo.
The new company combines Winston’s long-term expertise in art valuation with Artory-backed technology infrastructure and a database of more than 50 million art market transactions. The result is a platform that provides secure, defensive and data-rich valuations to a range of clients, from insurers and banks to home offices and collectors.
But WAG is not only committed to providing better spreadsheets. It enters a valuable market environment. Co-executive chairman Elizabeth von Habsburg told Bloombergfirst reported the merger on Tuesday. “You will see it with a dealer who is going out of business or who decides not to continue.”
This climate makes assessments more important and, in some cases, more cruel. Von Habsburg tells a recent case in which a print once worth $1 million was reevaluated for only $300,000. “Insurance companies love it,” she said. “Maybe not that many customers.”
According to Wag President Peter Loukas Bloomberg –The company is expected to process a $15 billion valuation this year, allocating nearly $9 billion between bank-funded collections and insurance appraisals. The remaining balance includes legacy settlements, generational wealth transfers, and direct demands from collectors who want to understand what they have.
The final category is less than people expect. “A few years ago, we were asked to look at a timeline review of a very important collector,” Von Habsburg said. “It’s only worth $3 million. We looked at it…it’s actually $20 million.”
The value proposition of WAG is that it has access to information that almost no one else can see. Unlike the auction results, which are public (if massaged frequently), private sales are still largely hidden. To compensate, WAG compiled a price list ahead of the big expo, tracked the sales content, and summarized nearly one million dealer data points.
“We recommend 30% of the largest art collectors in the country,” said co-executive chairman Nanne Dekking. “So every dealer sends us a message because they want us to share with our customers.”
In other words, Winston Artory not only evaluates the artwork, but also the state of the art market itself. For the moment, the prospects are mixed. Certain categories, such as 18th-century sculptures and American paintings, have shown new interest. But the quantity has decreased, and private sales have dominated, complicating price discovery.
Still, the company is not worried about being outdated. “Death, debt, divorce, disaster,” Von Habsburg quipped. “This will never stop.”
