How to Store Your Art Collection

Valuable art collections are impossible to be replaced because they are only one of their kinds. Storing these pieces of valuable arts can be a big challenge and very risky tasks. You really have to know what you are doing otherwise these arts can be lost forever. Below are a few tips on how to store your art collections.

Prepare an Environment That Suits the Condition of the Artwork
Get a professional consultant to recommend the suitable rooms, temperature, humidifies, and other important factors to create a suitable environment to store your arts collections.

How to Choose the Right Storage Room
The most suitable room for collecting the artworks should be close finished and dust-free room with climate controls. The attics and basement should be avoided due to heat and high humidity. If there is an air vent in the room, it would be best to get the deflective device to deflect the air, so the air does not blow directly on the art work.

Apart from the above, try not to select the room with the windows, because windows can bring in the direct sunlight which may cause your artwork to crumble and fade.

How to Ensure Correct Documentation When Storing Art
Archiving your art collections before you pack is necessary in order to keep the track record and protecting the art from misplace, damage, or loss. All of the inventories should be photo the packing time, date, or storage places should be recorded. Normally, these notes will travel with the art, so, you can keep track of the art locations over time. Now a days, the documentation can be done online in the cloud with Artwork Achieve.

How to Prepare Your Art for Storage
Use a clean microfiber cloth to clean off the dust from the hard surfaces, or the frame. Or, you can use the wood polish or metal polish in order to avoid any rust.

Seek a professional advice on wrapping techniques, because, if it is not done properly, you may trap the humidity inside and this will deteriorate the condition. But, normally, wrapping the art is not advisable.

Use Crescent Board: Art storage experts use crescent board, which is an acid-free professional mounting board to separate pieces from touching when stacked or in transit. This way the piece is protected, but it can still breathe.

Make Sure to use all the Acid-Free material. The frame material and the storage material should be acid-free, because, the non-acid-free material will age faster and could damage the back of the canvas.

How to Maintain the Right Climate
The ideal humidity to store artwork is 40-50% with a temperature between 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit (21-24 degrees Celsius). This is easily achieved with a humidifier and air condition. Severe climates can cause cracked paint, warping, yellowing of paper, and mold growth. Try to keep the humidity not to exceed the change of over 5% within 24 hours.

How to Keep Your Artwork Off the Ground
The art work should not be store on the ground and should not be stacked on top of the other pieces. It should be hung in the storage unit. If you need to stack pieces in a small space, you can store them likes books on a bookshelf, but not piling them up.

How to Store Your Art if You Don’t Have Room at Home
With the above tips, you already have all the tools to store your art. However, if you do not have a room at your house, you can either store your art work at climate-controlled storage unit or you can work with art specialist storage facility. You can select either one of them which best suited your condition.

Special thanks to Derek Smith of Axis Fine Art Installation for his contributions.

Credit and Reference
Derek Smith of Axis Fine Art Installation for his contributions.
https://www.artworkarchive.com/blog/how-to-store-your-art-collection-like-an-expert