Finding Info on Art Appraisal Career

Xiliary Twil of Art Asset Management Group sent me this amusing, or perhaps sad post on a research request to a San Jose librarian about becoming an art appraiser.

I think the article goes to show how much work the three major personal property organizations, ISA, AAA and ASA have to go to educate the public about appraisal careers, and qualified appraisers and appraisals. I think it is a rather sad commentary, although not surprising that a professional research librarian would have such a hard time finding quality information about becoming an art appraiser.

The San Jose Library post states

A customer asked me: "I’m writing a novel in which one of the characters is an art appraiser.  I’d like to research what an art appraiser does."

I started with a search on art appraiser in the Occupational Outlook Handbook with mixed results; "appraisers" appear in both the insurance and real estate fields. So I changed my search term to art appraisal and had some success, as well as with curator. A search in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site showed "Art Appraiser" is classified as a "Sales Support Occupation".

Next I tried our online catalog.  A keyword search with careers art in the catalog yields 90 results, including an eBook titled Careers in Art by Blythe Carmenson (login required for SJPL customers.)  This eBook contained no entries on an "Art Appraiser" as a career.

I visited the Careers section and consulted a few books such as Best Jobs for the 21st Century (by Lauren Shatkin), Careers in Focus – Arts & Entertainment, and 200 Best Jobs for College Students without finding any entries for "Art Appraiser".

Next I checked the list of Online Databases on Careers and found some possibilities in Vocational and Career Collection (login required), a database from EBSCOHost. An Advanced Search in Phrases Search Mode and Fulltext option with keywords Art Appraiser OR Art Appraisal yields 46 results.  Refining to publication date after 1975 reduced results to 36 results.  Article, "How Much is Your Stuff Worth?" gave some backgrounds on "Art Appraisers" and their organizations.  The best search result was "The Appraiser as An Artist," an article that elaborated on the "art" of appraising art, but failed to give the basic concepts of the profession.

Lastly I did a Google search under careers in art appraisal and found some good results:
Fine Art Appraisal: 10 Tips on How to Become an Art Appraisal (from About.com)
Art Appraisal Training and Career Information (from Education Portal)

The American Society of Appraisers showed up in many of the last searches.  I decided to provide this source as a contact for the customer to pursue his research further.

Source: The San Jose Public Library