I am a UK-based self-employed Art Technician, who travels around my local region to different galleries and museums to install art exhibitions.
Sometimes I handle famous and expensive artworks or priceless artifacts, but most of the time it's probably artworks you've not heard of. This includes 2D work like paintings, 3D work like sculptures, video projections, screens, sound systems, computers, and room-filling installations. Sometimes we work directly with living artists to help produce their work.
Happy to talk about technical stuff i.e. how artworks are transported, packed, fixed to the wall, what sort of fittings are used, how an exhibition is spaced out, hung, arranged etc; or to talk about working in galleries, or any questions from artists about how to prepare works for exhibition etc
I'm also a practicing artist, and historically both a filmmaker and gallery curator - so happy to answer things relating to that sort of thing too.
Because it's a pretty niche job I may have to keep some details vague for privacy etc.
I'm doing a public talk fairly soon on "what I do", and I need to know what sort of things people are potentially interested in, so I can focus more on those in the talk - so any relevant questions would be really helpful to me, thank you.
Since this is an "ask me anything"...
Have you ever broken a piece (or been accused of breaking a piece)? What typically happens next in those scenarios?
I've never broken anything of exceptionally high value, but yes, things can break sometimes, no matter how careful you are.
Quite a lot of artists' work is made by a drive and passion for the production of the art object, rather than necessarily considering its structure and durability - this means things can be badly made, barely held together etc
There can be trends for things like ceramic sculptures to be so thin and fragile they look like they'd snap if you touched them... well... sometimes they do - and I have to touch them, and fix them down and make them safe.
I've been lucky with the few things I have broken or damaged, as it's always been fixable or replaceable, and so far, early career artists' work only.
As mentioned, a ceramic sculpture from a set, known to be incredibly fragile, and expecting a few to be broken during the installation process - a part snapped off during handling - it was superglued back on by the artist, who was present. I also chipped a sort of slot-together laser cut wooden sculpture on a very fragile edge piece - in this case, they got a replacement piece cut and covered the cost - I did offer to pay/contribute or run it through my insurance, but it was considered low enough cost to just be redone. The artists and galleries involved still choose to work with me by preference, so I think I was forgiven.
I also cracked a monitor screen once - though I was acting under instruction of the person who owned it, against my advice. In that case, I paid half towards the replacement, basically by undercharging for half a day.
I know people who've broken much worse in their careers, but still nothing catastrophic. Also, I've maybe installed 200 - 300 exhibitions, and somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 artworks. I think I've noticably damaged less than 5, so I think my ratio is still good.
I imagine I've contributed to subtly damaging a lot more than that, just from tiny knocks and bumps which add up over time - or simply the act of moving the work at all causes a tiny amount of damage - imagine each time you put a screw back in the same hole, you lose a little bit of material, for example.
I have insurance for this work, but generally things are covered by the venue's insurance, and anything of very high value is watched obsessively every step of the way, and all possible risks removed - even if it's going to take all day to put up one work.
If anything does get damaged, the general run of things is identifying how it happened and who was involved - more about avoiding similar happening again than blaming anyone - though they do have to work out which organisation was in charge at the time - for example, once an art mover drops the work off, paperwork is signed to say "not our problem any more". Same in reverse once it's loaded onto a van.
I don't know of any major incidents when I've been working, but generally things are covered by insurance and people are forgiven, as long as they weren't obviously being careless and were following best practice - you could find yourself not being asked back again though - most people doing similar work are self-employed freelancers, so they can just use someone else in future.
One thing to note is that if you were to damage a £20 million painting or something, unless the whole thing is exploded or set on fire or eaten, you're not looking at £20 million of damage. The cost is actually the cost of the conservator or technicians who will repair the work - so breaking the frame corner or something, might only be a half-day's work for repairs - so although the work is £20 million, you'd only have caused £200 - £500 of damage, for example.