Skates Market Notes

Skates looks at art management investment funds in its most recent art market notes publication.  Skates focuses on the Artists Pension Trust which has been active since 2004 with varying degrees of success. The Artists Pension Trust (APT), as noted by Skates, claims to have over $100 million in assets with annual returns of over 17%.  As we know, many art funds have not fared well, so the Skates market notes on APT is interesting.

Skates reports

In an age when the concept of art investment has managed to obtain the same respect as other activities in the art market, questions of viability and practical implementation nevertheless remain. Practiced by numerous institutions and individuals for over 40 years, with a fluctuating degree of success as evidenced by the British Rail Pension Fund’s investments, no one has yet managed to make a successful art investment case on a long-term basis.

Yet this lack of success hardly serves as a hurdle for those who produce indices and other tools to track the art market and make it more transparent. Furthermore, key players continue to discover and experiment with alternative investment methods, attracting financial experts and art world representatives in the hopes of achieving a successful outcome. Artist Pension Trust (APT) has managed to go even further by attracting artists themselves. As APT prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary next year, Skate’s has decided to analyze its achievements, limitations and the institution’s overall potential. Since 2004, APT has managed both to grow and expand internationally, developing eight regional trusts in New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Mumbai, Beijing and Dubai.  Each trust has a capacity of up to 250 artists with the New York, Berlin and Beijing trusts already filled. To meet the great demand  from artists interested in joining APT, the company launched the APT Global One trust in 2013. Currently, APT Global One has an increased capacity of 628 artists and is designed for optimal diversification to benefit artists all around the world. Today 40,000 artworks have been committed to APT by 2,000 artists; 10,000 have already been collected by the trust. In estimating the value of the collection, APT claims its worth to be more than USD 100 million and projects annual appreciation of 17%.

Source: Skates