Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 11 2024

And the Oscar goes to - the news is on breakfast television. The printed media can't keep up, especially as for some people Friday is already Sunday. (for English readers: Sunday Newspapers from Frankfurter or Welt are already printed and published on Friday) 7 Oscars went to "Oppenheimer", the father of the atomic bomb - Barbie came away empty-handed, times are not so rosy. For the first time, an Oscar went to Ukraine for the documentary film "20 Days in Mariupol" directed by Mstyslav Chernov. Chernov is probably the first award winner who wished he hadn't had to make his film.

Two exhibitions opened in Kyiv on Friday at the Pinchuk Art Centre. One was entitled "I Feel you" and included works by Jenny Holzer, while the other was dedicated to the artist Oleksandr Rojtburd, who died in 2021 and played a key role in shaping the Ukrainian Transavangard movement. We managed to organise insurance cover for both exhibitions, of course without the risk of war - but at least a two-year blockade could be unblocked. This is another way of signalling hope and normality in Ukraine.

Stefan Kobel reports on both ARCO Madrid and TEFAF, which are taking place at the same time. In Maastricht, 20,000 works of art from the last 7,000 years and many different cultures are on sale. These include a Kandinsky that is valued at over EUR 50 million. The old masters are also of high quality and worth millions. But what risk do the exhibitors and thus the insurers as a whole run? Does anyone bother to calculate the total accumulation that could affect the reinsurers for the 20 days including assembly and dismantling? Hardly possible, because many gallery policies now have flat-rate sums insured for art fairs. Only if they are exceeded does anything become transparent. According to our observations, there are no works under EUR 1,000. The offer under 10,000 EUR is also rare. If we assume an average value of 30,000 EUR, we arrive at 600 million EUR cumulatively, with an average of 50,000 EUR we would be at a billion. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. The premium share corresponds to between EUR 250,000 and EUR 500,000. Compared to the premiums you get from cities for art and exhibition insurance, that sounds like good premium quality. In any case, the works are on a high level - you can still go there until Thursday.

XL a Company of AXA has been the main sponsor of TEFAF for 20 years and has inherited this honour, because originally it was AXA ART, which has disappeared into its belly. The marketing team must have realised that XL is not such a big hit in the art sector and has returned to pure AXA in its trade fair appearance. It will be good for the brand and help to regain lost ground if you trust the expertise of your own art experts and does not overcompliantly damage the product in the hands of so-called claims underwriters.

Cities that can afford their own museums have a special responsibility towards culture because, as with infrastructure, preservation and further development must take centre stage here too, otherwise everything will become rotten and putrid and will only tend to be bearable for people with a penchant for living together according to agrarian, technology-free patterns. In some city administrations, the future is now being determined in the quiet little chamber (this must have something to do with the city treasury) for the coming years in terms of the budget. Money has become scarce because administrations have become bloated and people are surprised at the personnel costs. In contrast to Switzerland, not every appointment of teaching staff is put to the vote in Germany. There are also areas where saving is not an option because it could cost votes (social overprovision, for example) - but culture is a wonderful victim: it only costs money and is supposedly only for the privileged rich, who can be happy that their taxes are not being raised. You can then plan budget cuts of 20% in the cultural sector. The money saved will then be used for bicycle-friendly transport planning. It's just a shame that some 80-year-olds don't feel so comfortable in the front of a cargo bike.

Business models sometimes have pitfalls. Chubb Insurance, for example, offers legal guarantees. You need these in particular if you want to go to the second instance and don't want to jeopardise your liquidity. The only bad thing is when a certain Donald Trump is the beneficiary of such a guarantee and this comes to light. The Americans probably think that's great, because they don't seem to attach much importance to the moral integrity of their president. The main focus is on being smart. But outside America, where Trump is not so popular, this could have a negative impact on Chubb.

We wish everyone a good start into the week -

The team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne