Practice · Private capital and collections

An acquisition policy is worth more to a family office than a valuation.

ArtisDomus, the practice of Polina Surina, advises families and their offices on governance, acquisition policy and collection strategy. It works in Paris, Malta, the United Kingdom, Qatar and the Gulf, and only the owner pays its fee. When one person builds a collection over decades and never writes down why, a committee ends up running an asset it cannot understand.

Published by ArtisDomus, written by Polina Surina.

The work is to write that judgement down while the collector can still correct the draft. An acquisition policy says what belongs in the collection and what does not. A valuation goes out of date. A policy goes on guiding decisions.

01/05

A close view of heavy gold fabric folded into deep, soft creases. — Pl. 01 Daniel Knorr. Detail.

The question

It has the size of an institution and none of the rules.

Decades of buying have produced something with the scale, storage bill and insurance schedule of an institution, with none of its governance. It is owned personally, and it sits in a family office next to assets that all have policies.

The problem is always the same. One person’s judgement built the collection, and now a process runs it. Nobody recorded that judgement in a form the process can follow. A committee can approve a budget, but it cannot recreate someone’s taste.

So the work starts with a written statement. It says what the collection is for, which institutions it belongs beside, and what it must not become. The acquisition policy follows from that statement. Only then do a valuer, an insurer or a lawyer have something to work from.

02/05

Method

With a policy, others can apply the collector’s judgement without asking.

Read the owner and the place. Who owns it, who it is for, and which people will be in the room.
Map the field. Museums, foundations, collectors, galleries and artists who can carry the project.
Write the thesis. What the collection has to say, and what has to be excluded in order to say it.
Place each work. Every work has a position and a stated reason for that position.
Programme and activate. A collection earns its keep through what happens around it.

Here the third step matters most, and it produces two documents. The thesis guides what to buy. The acquisition policy lets someone else apply the thesis without having to ask. Family offices lack this second document.

The practice takes no commission from galleries and keeps no discounts. Any terms it negotiates for the owner pass to the owner in full and are disclosed in writing.

03/05

Discretion

Private collections are the most private work the practice does.

The practice publishes nothing about a family without written permission for that engagement. It does not photograph the collections themselves.

The reference library explains the method. One entry covers how an art advisor is paid and where conflicts of interest arise. It separates what the market makes public from what it keeps private.

How an art advisor is paid, and where the conflicts sit

04/05

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