How Our Multi-Office Structure Works
Our art advisory firm is uniquely structured with 4 offices around North America, and this is truly our biggest advantage in 1) supporting our clients’ interest in building dynamic art collections, and 2) helping us stay engaged, positive, and goal-oriented.
Anyone who is interested in engaging a business like ours, or is in the creative entrepreneurship space, can take inspiration from how we navigate our divergent tastes and value collaboration over competition. (Plus, here is the backstory on how this structure unintentionally evolved, as well as support for learning about businesses outside of your industry as a key form of inspiration.)
Pierre Dorion in our Yorkville project condo.
TASTE.
Every one of our team members has a different taste for art. This is intentional. It’s also all within a range that’s best showcased through the diversity of projects we’ve shared here. Every single one of us has a different favorite artist, design aesthetic, gallery, medium, working style and more. We’re also all evolving and our individual likes and dislikes change often. The key is that we trust each other’s taste; my colleague may be excited about a newly discovered artist that, quite honestly, does not appeal to me at first. Then, as I hear my colleague’s enthusiasm for the work, learn about the story behind, and hear how she envisions it impacting a viewer and space, I become hooked over time. In that same vein, walking an art fair with any of my colleagues is infinitely more productive than walking it alone; we stop into booths that the other person would have walked right past, engage in conversations about artists that one of us may have not seen, and start to open our minds to more possibilities. This is how we broaden our skills as art advisors both when we are working virtually in our respective regions, and when we’re together in real life.
collaboration.
Our team is incredibly collaborative, and not at all competitive. This leads to a great energy between us; we are excited to share what we’ve seen, ask questions, and lift each other up. We also keep each other accountable, which further drives progress. On a monthly basis, this takes the form of team and individual meetings where we formally share in-progress projects, ideate on next steps, troubleshoot with space, logistical, or other challenges, and celebrate each other’s successes. Beyond those formal touch bases, we are in conversation regularly with anything from the, “Here’s what I’m preparing for the installation. Am I missing anything?” to, “this pricing looks off…what do you think?”.
Ultimately, with more eyes on more markets that do not necessarily intersect, our multi-city structure positions us well to best service our clients. It also inspired us to create an informal group of other advisors, called the Art Advisors Collaborative, that we orchestrate meetings for quarterly. In this group, we emphasize the same values: collaboration over competition, sharing is caring, and lifting each other up to raise our collective profiles. The benefits of all of this are passed onto our clients in the form of more unique art finds, more problems solved, and simply a good energy that I believe attracts people to work with us, and refer us to their friends.