The situation is very common: at the beginning of an art collection, the pieces are few and the collector imagines they will keep every detail about each work in their head. But time passes, the collection grows, and it becomes impossible to memorise so much information and keep it organised and accessible for a range of situations: a loan, a sale, or managing the needs of periodic conservation or insurance. For collectors who like to handle these activities directly, there are some apps that help with cataloguing works of art.
In this post, we list some solutions available on the market. In general, they all offer the possibility of organising digital records for each work, with information on authorship, value, dimensions, technique and a field for uploading photos.
Four apps for cataloguing your collection
Artdex
Artdex, available only for iOS, promotes as one of its advantages the separation of the collection's photos into a specific folder on the phone, preventing them from getting mixed up with other images, including works photographed in museums, which, after a while, can make it virtually impossible to find a work from the collection in the image gallery.
Arteïa
Arteïa, in turn, offers the possibility of managing documents related to each work, setting up periodic conservation checks, creating a financial dashboard and building digital showrooms, which can be public or shared only with the people the collector designates. The tool has a monthly cost of € 9.50.
Collectrium
The free Collectrium, available only for iOS, stands out for the possibility of generating a customised presentation mode, in which the collector chooses the fields that will be shown; this can be useful, for example, to present the collection to someone without showing strategic information, such as the purchase price. The app also has a feature to simulate, virtually, how a work would look if placed in the real setting of the home.
Simplify.art
Finally, Simplify.art stores reports and documents related to each work, including insurance information. The free version of the app runs on iOS and Android smartphones. To access the inventory on a computer, the paid version is required.
When a specialised cataloguing service pays off
However, not everyone has time to personally look after the collection's inventory. There are also cases in which the number of works is already so large that it is even hard to know where to start. In situations like these, the best option is to rely on a specialised cataloguing service, carried out by qualified professionals.
Clé Chenue do Brasil has partners who provide this service, and some clients take the opportunity to carry out this process while the collection is stored on our premises. In this case, the professionals must be expressly authorised by the client to have access to the space and the stored works.
Want to know more about this service? Talk to us.
