Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services is a highly experienced professional consulting firm with expertise in Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art.
THE ADVISORY
Serving the Collector
Our services are geared to a select, limited number of clients. We are thus able to focus our energies and unsurpassed access in the most productive and meaningful ways possible.
In serving the collector, our first and paramount job is to gain a full understanding of those objectives, including the client’s area of interest, aesthetic taste, and budget requirements. The works of art we help find and vet for our clients must fit the parameters they have established. This way, each collection we help build speaks solely with the voice of the collector.
The Market
There are more international art fairs, gallery shows, bien- nales and museum exhibitions today than ever before. Because collectors are typically very busy people with a multitude of interests, they cannot possibly cover all that is of importance on their own. With our large staff of experienced professionals, we extend the collector’s reach and market coverage and thereby increase their access to the best works of artworks that are in high demand and rare to the market.
Our clients are benefited by our longstanding, dependable relationships with a vast number of gallerists, dealers, auction house personnel and museum officials, and by our ability to expend time and effort attending exhibitions and selling venues around the world.
Research and Analysis
Our firm brings the highest levels of scholarship and connoisseurship to vetting works of art. Our in-house research is greatly facilitated by a private library of over eleven thousand volumes, which includes many out-of-print monographs, annotated exhibition catalogues, and other art periodicals and publications. This unique and special resource, combined with keen critical judgment and art world experience, is placed exclusively at the service of our clients.
The complex matrix of factors that determines the desirability and value of a work of art, such as provenance, condition, global supply and demand, critical importance and historic significance, is the focus of our research and analysis…and at the heart of our practice.
Assessing Value
Because of our long-standing prominence in the field, the sheer number of offerings that have been made through our practice, and the quality of the collections we work with, we have been privy to a wealth of information on the pricing of art objects. Over these many years, we have built – data point by data point – an unmatched archive on the prices of literally thousands of works of art.
Our private archive on market valuations enables us to pro- vide collectors with thorough pricing analysis on each potential acquisition, thus minimizing the potential for risk and increasing the potential for gain.
Objective Advice
As private advisors we work solely in the service of our clients, providing neutral and objective advice uncompromised by anything but the collector’s specific and unique needs, desires and objectives.
Our position of neutrality is distinct from the conflicted interests of dealers, auction house personnel and museum curators: The selling strategy of gallery owners and dealers is driven by the artists they represent and their inventory; the advice provided by auction house personnel is determined by what is in their upcoming sales; and the counsel of museum curators is guided by the collecting needs and priorities of the institutions that employ them. Our only agenda is our client’s agenda.
Discretion and Confidentiality
While our firm’s position in the art world is public and prominent, many of our clients prefer to go about their collecting activities in private, with little visibility and utmost discretion and confidentiality. We are experienced in serving the collector who prefers anonymity, as well as the collector who chooses to take on a more public profile.
Increasing Value
Collecting art provides many rewards, not the least of which is appreciation in asset value. Our clients have enjoyed extraordinary performance in the value of their collections, with many of their aquisitions increasing value 10 to 20 times, or more. Through hard work, unmatched coverage of the international art world and keen eyes, we have an unparalleled record of identifying art movements and individual artists of importance… before they are deemed “hot” by the rest of the pack.
PEOPLE
- Thea Westreich WagnerPrincipal
Thea Westreich founded Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services – a private consultancy serving individuals building fine art collections, after numerous years working as a volunteer in the visual and performing arts, and following board associations with The Friends of Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre and the Museum of African Art. Since 1982, Thea has advised private collectors throughout the United States and Europe. She has worked with clients to build collections focused variously on Impressionism, American, Modern, and Contemporary Art. She has curated collections in specific media, such as video and film, photography, and works on paper, in addition to the more traditional genres of painting and sculpture.
Thea has built a research library of over 13,000 volumes, which underlies her firm’s dedication to thorough research and analysis in vetting works of art. Along with her husband, Ethan Wagner, Thea also publishes artists’ books.
- Ethan WagnerPrincipal
After a long career in the public policy arena, Wagner joined his wife, Thea, on a full-time basis to help manage Art Advisory’s expanded services. Wagner’s art interests go back more than two decades, to his days in California when he collected contemporary and outsider art, published artists’ books, and was involved with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and other art organizations.
In addition to managing Art Advisory’s business and financial practices and external communications, Wagner is actively involved in canvassing the international art market on behalf of the firm’s clients, and in publishing artists books, together with Thea.
- Suzanne ModicaPartner
Suzanne Modica joined Art Advisory Services in 2002 and became a partner of the firm in 2012. She works directly with clients on all aspects of their collections as well as overseeing special projects for the firm, from publishing to architectural projects, with an emphasis on contemporary art. Previous to Art Advisory Services, Suzanne received a dual BA in History and the History of Art and Architecture at Miami University. She later studied at Tulane University in the MA Art History program, followed by a position at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
- Ashley CarrPartner
Ashley joined Art Advisory Services in 2007. She works directly with clients on all aspects of their collecting activities. She also assists Thea and Ethan in producing their limited edition artist publications and in organizing other special projects, such as the first INDEPENDENT exhibition in the former DIA Center building in New York. After graduating from Brown University with degrees in History of Art as well as French Literature, she interned at the Neue Gallery in New York prior to joining the firm.
- Robert McKenzieAssociate
Robert McKenzie joined Art Advisory Services in Spring 2012. He assists Thea, Ethan, Ashley and Suzanne with the numerous research demands of the firm, from price data analysis for secondary market offerings through to research on the latest exhibitions at galleries around the world. He also provided research support for Thea and Ethan’s book “Collecting Art: For Love, Money and More” (Phaidon, Spring 2013). Before joining Art Advisory Services he worked for Alex Zachary Gallery, New York and with the design firm Bless in Berlin. In 2009 he co-authored the book “The Ampersand Files: Art & Text 1981-2002” (Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane) and has curated exhibitions and written on art for numerous venues.
- Sara ChunAdministrative Assistant
Sara joined Art Advisory Services after completing her undergraduate Art History degree at Brandeis University. As the Office Administrator, she provides support and assistance to the staff on projects large and small. Prior to joining the firm, her work experience includes James Cohan Gallery, Gladstone Gallery, and the Rose Art Museum.