Independent Art Advisory for Private and Commercial Spaces

We advise private collectors, businesses, developers, and hospitality brands on art acquisition, collection strategy, and curatorial direction. Our work combines market insight, cultural context, and project execution.

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A considered and tailored advisory approach

We work closely with each client to develop art strategies shaped by their goals, space, and long-term vision. From sourcing original works to overseeing implementation, we ensure that every decision is aesthetically coherent, contextually relevant, and supported by informed market insight.

We advise private collectors, businesses, developers, and hospitality brands on acquisition, collection strategy, and curatorial direction — helping shape spaces with art that is both culturally meaningful and strategically selected.

Our Impact by the numbers

Projects advised

External experts

Artists and galleries sourced

Private Investors

Principles that guide our work

We approach each project through a balance of curatorial thinking, market awareness, and spatial context — ensuring that every decision is intentional and aligned with the client’s vision.

Context-Driven Selection

We select artworks based on the spatial context, architectural environment, and long-term objectives of the project.

Curatorial Clarity

Each project follows a clear artistic direction, ensuring coherence across all selected works.

Market Awareness

We focus on artists and works that maintain relevance, credibility, and stability within the art market.

A team combining curatorial expertise and market insight

James Smith

Founder and CEO

Thomas Jefferson

Senior Art Advisor

Bob Johnson

Art Advisor

Alicia Ventura

Collection Strategist

Farit Mukhamedov

Collection Strategist

Mikhail Shatunov

Project Manager

Andry Anderson

Art Sourcing Specialist

Anna Worms

Client Relations Manager

External Experts

Engaged on a project basis across advisory, research, and acquisition.

Hala Auji

Specialist in Islamic Art
University in Richmond

Eric Garberson

Specialist in 19th-century European art
Johns Hopkins University

Perrin Stein

Specialist in French works on paper
before 1800
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cory Korkow

Specialist in European Paintings and
Sculpture, 1500–1800
Cleveland Museum of Art

Stephanie D’Alessandro

Specialist in Modern Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paulina Pobocha

Specialist in Modern Art
Art Institute of Chicago

Babatunde Lawal

Specialist in African Art History
Detroit Institute of Arts

Denise Murrell

Specialist in 19th- and 20th-century art
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Femke Speelberg

Specialist in drawings, prints, and
illustrated books
Metropolitan Museum of Art

David Breslin

Specialist in Charge, Modern &
Contemporary Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nadiah Rivera Fellah

Specialist in Modern Art
Cleveland Museum of Art

Britany Salsbury

Specialist in Prints and Drawings
Cleveland Museum of Art

Let’s discuss your project

Whether you are building a private collection, planning a commercial space, or seeking curatorial guidance, we would be pleased to hear from you and explore how we can assist.

Get in touch

Questions Clients Often Ask

Call or text us:

+44 7747 106-181

Email us:

info@aurelart.com

What does your art advisory service include?

Our advisory work spans acquisitions, collection strategy, market analysis, due diligence, valuation support, and long-term collection management. Depending on the brief, we may advise on a single transaction, help shape a coherent collecting strategy, or review an existing collection from both a strategic and operational perspective.

We focus on improving decision quality, reducing avoidable risk, and aligning each action with the client’s broader objectives. Our role is not simply to facilitate transactions, but to provide structured and independent judgement throughout the process.

Do you work with first-time collectors as well as experienced clients?

Yes. We work with first-time collectors, established private collectors, family offices, and selected institutional clients. With newer collectors, our role is often to bring clarity to questions of focus, budget, risk tolerance, and acquisition criteria, so that collecting begins with discipline rather than impulse. With more experienced clients, the work may involve portfolio refinement, market positioning, documentation standards, or more complex acquisition and divestment decisions.

The format changes, but the principle remains the same: advice should be tailored to the client’s level of experience and the complexity of the collection.

Do you help clients acquire works privately and at auction?

Yes, we advise on acquisitions through both private channels and public auction markets. Our support may include sourcing, preliminary screening, pricing guidance, due diligence, bidding or negotiation strategy, and transaction-level decision support. Where relevant, we help clients compare private and auction routes, since access alone is not enough if the structure, documentation, or pricing of the transaction is weak. The objective is to ensure that the acquisition route serves the client’s interests rather than merely appearing attractive on the surface.

How do you assess whether a work is worth acquiring?

We assess a work through several interrelated factors: quality, condition, provenance, documentation, pricing, liquidity, market context, and relevance to the client’s strategy. A visually compelling work may still be a poor acquisition if the documentation is incomplete, the price is unjustified, or the market context is fragile. We therefore evaluate the work both as a cultural object and as a decision that carries financial, legal, and reputational implications. Our role is to distinguish between genuine opportunity and expensive enthusiasm.

Do you provide provenance, authenticity, and due diligence support?

Yes. Provenance review and due diligence are central to responsible art advisory, particularly where the work, artist, or transaction structure requires closer scrutiny. We review available documentation, ownership history, exhibition and publication records, and identify gaps or inconsistencies that may require further investigation.

Where formal authentication or specialist expertise is needed, we help determine the appropriate next step and coordinate with external experts where relevant. The aim is not to create false certainty, but to define the level of risk clearly before the client proceeds.

Do you advise on pricing, valuation, and market value?

Yes, we advise on pricing and market value in the context of acquisitions, sales, and collection reviews. Our assessment considers comparable sales, market depth, object quality, rarity, timing, and the specific conditions of the transaction. We do not treat value as an abstract number separated from context, because the same artist can present very different pricing realities depending on medium, period, condition, provenance, and market timing. What matters is whether the proposed value is justified for that particular work under those particular conditions.

Can you help build or refine a collection strategy?

Yes. Collection strategy is one of the most important parts of our work, because without it, even strong acquisitions can accumulate into an incoherent whole. We help clients define the purpose of the collection, identify areas of focus, set acquisition criteria, and establish a framework for decision-making over time. In more developed collections, this may also involve reviewing concentration risk, identifying gaps, and refining the collection’s intellectual or market positioning.

A clear strategy improves consistency, capital allocation, and long-term collection quality.

Do you work across emerging, contemporary, modern, and historical art?

Yes, but we do not treat these categories as interchangeable. Different market segments require different methods of analysis, different risk assumptions, and different forms of due diligence. Emerging artists, for example, require greater selectivity and tolerance for uncertainty, while modern and historical works often demand closer attention to provenance, attribution, and condition.

Our advice is always adjusted to the category in question, rather than applied through a generic market template.

Can you review, document, manage, or prepare a collection for sale or transfer?

Yes. We advise on collection reviews, cataloguing, documentation standards, long-term management, and selective sales or partial divestment. This may include assessing the quality and coherence of a collection, improving records and archives, preparing works for market, or helping structure the collection for succession and future transfer.

Many collections are stronger than their documentation, and many sales fail to maximise value because the collection was never properly prepared. We help clients move from informal ownership to structured stewardship.

Can we work with you remotely, and how are your services structured?

Yes, we regularly work with clients remotely across different locations. Strategy work, market analysis, document review, pricing guidance, and much of the due diligence process can be handled effectively through secure digital communication, while physical inspections or local coordination are addressed separately where needed.

Our fee structure depends on the scope, complexity, and duration of the engagement, and may be arranged as a fixed-fee project, a retainer, or a clearly defined advisory assignment. We prefer transparent structures and clearly scoped work, because vague advisory arrangements usually benefit no one.

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