Artist Pension Trust

Artist Pension Trust

Industry	Financial services
Number of locations	New York,[1] Los Angeles,[1] London,[1] Leipzig, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mexico City and Amman
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Moti Shniberg Dan Galai David A. Ross Pamela Auchincloss[2]
Products	Investment products
Revenue	US$100 million (collection)[3]
Parent	MutualArt [4]
Website	www.aptglobal.org

Artist Pension Trust (APT) is an investment vehicle specializing in contemporary art, which aims to provide financial security and international exposure to selected artists chosen by its international curatorial team. It has the largest global collection of contemporary art, comprising 10,000 artworks from 2,000 artists in 75 countries,^[5] and growing by more than 2,000 each year.^[6] As of November 2013, a total of 40,000 artworks had been committed to APT by 2,000 artists. APT claimed its then value to be more than $US100 million.^[7]

Artworks from the APT collection have been used to curate exhibitions for museums including the MoMA, Tate Modern, Hirshhorn Museum, as well as for art venues such as the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, Documenta and Manifesta.

History

In 2004, a company named MutualArt launched the Artist Pension Trust as the first pension program for visual contemporary artists. It was founded by businessman Moti Shniberg, Hebrew University business professor who attempted to trademark the phrase September 11, 2001 to benefit from monetisation of the terrorist attack ^[8] Dan Galai, and David A. Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.^[9] APT started with eight regional trusts and subsequently launched a global trust, APT Global One, with a total of 628 artists. APT Global One was designed for optimal risk diversification.

After the first year, Artist Pension Trust owned the collection of approximately 65 artworks created by artists in the New York branch, including Jules de Balincourt, William Cordova, Anthony Goicolea, and Aida Ruilova.^[10]

In 2012, APT accelerated expansion into Asia in partnership with Simon Murray & Company, a pan-Asian investment fund management firm. By 2013, APT had trust locations in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, Dubai, Beijing, Mumbai, Mexico City, as well as APT Global One.^[11]

Controversy

Artist Pension Trust Faces Backlash over Storage Fees

Artist Pension Trust faces backlash over storage fees, artists who signed up to participate in the Artist Pension Trust are up in arms over a new monthly storage fee. The trust’s announcement that, beginning in September, it will charge $6.50 per month for each work that members stored has some threatening to pull out of APT. Al Brenner, CEO of the Mutual Art Group, which includes APT, defended the new fee, arguing that the cost is much less than artists will have to pay elsewhere. He told Colin Gleadell of Artnet that “it’s not about raising money to balance our books; [it’s about getting] the work out of storage so that it can be seen and eventually sold. Some works have been in storage for ten years and that’s not good.” According to Brenner, the appeal of APT for some artists was the free storage facilities. In order to become a member, one originally had to agree to contribute to the storage expenses for oversize works when signing the contract, but the policy has never been enforced. ^[12]

Artist Pension Trust Pulls 18 Lots From Sotheby’s Following Mass Artist Freakout

The news was first reported in the Telegraph by Colin Gleadell. The lots, which were withdrawn from Sotheby’s “Contemporary Curated” sale in London, included work by David Shrigley, Jeremy Deller, Richard Wright, Jane and Louise Wilson, Liam Gillick, Martin Boyce, and Douglas Gordon—all Turner Prize nominees or winners—as well as by Ryan Gander, and Bob and Roberta Smith (aka Patrick Brill).The withdrawal from auction indicates that APT is actually listening to its member artists’ concerns over disposing of their works at auction. It does, however, raise questions about what the artists thought they were signing on for in the first place when they agreed to contribute work with the knowledge that the ultimate goal is very specifically a sale to raise cash. As Gleadell points out, “the reluctance of artists to sell at auction highlights why financial models are difficult to apply to art.” Brenner told the Telegraph he is not planning more auctions, though “it might be a different story in Asia where artists are much more auction friendly.”^[13]

Management

APT's Chairman and co-founder is the high-tech entrepreneur and art collector Moti Shniberg. The Advisory Board include Professor Dan Galai, an authority in risk diversification theory, David Ross, Chair of the MFA Art Practice Program at the School of Visual Arts and former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, SFMOMA and ICA Boston, Elena Foster, founder of Ivory Press, John Baldessari, American conceptual artist, and Raymond McGuire, Head of Global Banking at Citigroup, a collector of contemporary art and member of several boards including The International Center of Photography, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Merger

Artist Pension Trust announced a merger with MutualArt.com in 2013, a website dedicated to “objective art information,” to form MutualArt Group. Mark Sebba, the former CEO of the Net-a-Porter Group Limited and current trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum, has been named chair of the company. Sebba will take over from Moti Shniberg, who served as chairman of both APT and MutualArt.com until the merger. The merger will facilitate the sale of artworks from the Artist Pension Trust collection to the most relevant collectors and institutions across the globe.^[14]

Artwork distribution

The artworks in the trust are gradually sold over the course of 20 years for the benefit of the artists. The funds from the net proceeds of each artwork sold are distributed in the following manner: 72% are distributed to the artists in the trust, with 40% to the individual artist and 32% among the artists in that trust based on the number of artworks they have deposited. The remaining 28% is used to cover the operational costs of the trusts.^[15]

Exhibitions

In June 2013, Venice Biennale, a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years (in odd years) in Venice, Italy, included 26 artists who are also a part of the global Artist Pension Trust.^[16]

In 2013, artworks from the APT collection were displayed in over 100 exhibitions worldwide, including at Tate Modern in London, the Seoul Museum of Art, and Göteborgs Konsthall.^[17]

APT Institute

In July 2013, Artist Pension Trust announced establishment of APT Institute, a non-profit organization whose task is to facilitate exhibitions and loans for curators, museums, and art organizations, as well as to promote contemporary art and artists worldwide. Recent loans arranged through the APT Institute include Jean Shin’s installation of neckties and a chain link fence named "Untied", which featured in the solo show "Jean Shin: Common Threads", at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Sherif El Azma’s "Powerchord Skateboard", a two-screen DVD installation that was part of the Tate Modern’s recent show "Project Space: Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear".^[18]

Awards

APT artists have won awards and prizes including the Turner Prize, the William H. Johnson Prize, the Hugo Boss Prize and the Future Generation Art Prize.^[7] Some of the APT's most prominent artists include Douglas Gordon (winner Turner Prize 1996), Yael Bartana (winner Artist Mundi Prize 2010), Richard Wright (winner Turner Prize 2009), Martin Boyce (winner Turner Prize 2011), Richard Aldrich, Jeremy Deller (winner Turner Prize 2004), Beth Campbell, Gert & Uwe Tobias, Charles Avery, Gelitin, Alicia Paz, Jean Shin, and David Shrigley.

See also

• Contemporary art

References

External links

• Official website
• Chairman Moti Shniberg on the ArtTactic Podcast