Company type | Private limited company |
---|---|
Industry | Art logistics |
Founded | 25 September 1972 |
Headquarters | London, England |
Area served | Worldwide |
Services | Art transport, art storage, art installation |
Revenue | £15.75 million (2015) [1] |
£1.21 million (2015) [1] | |
Number of employees | 131 (2015) [1] |
Parent | FIH group plc |
Website | www |
Momart is a British company specialising in the storage, transportation, and installation of works of art. A major proportion of their business is maintaining often delicate artworks in a secure, climate-controlled environment. The company maintains specialist warehouse facilities adapted for this task. Momart's clients include the Royal Academy of Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Buckingham Palace. The company received considerable media attention in 2004 when a fire spread to one of their warehouses from an adjacent unit, destroying the works in it, including works by Young British Artists such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, including Emin's 1995 piece Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 . On 5 March 2008 Momart was taken over by Falkland Islands Holdings for £10.3 million, [2] of which £4.6 million was in cash, £2.5 million was in shares and £3.2 million was deferred consideration.[ clarification needed ] [3]
Momart began in 1971 as the "Jim Moyes's Compendium of Working Possibilities", with its founder, himself an artist, offering installation, display, handling, transport and framing services to up and coming artists and emergent galleries in London. Early users of the service included David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin and Francis Bacon. The client base quickly grew by word of mouth in recognition of the service levels being offered and in September 1972 the company was registered as Momart Limited – an amalgam of Jim Moyes and new partner Rees Martin. Rees subsequently left the business but the brand was becoming well established so the name remained.
The company set up its first office on Richmond Road, Hackney in East London and continued to grow organically – moving art, painting gallery walls, making frames and cases, hanging paintings, slinging sculpture and providing art storage. By 1985 Momart had gained a solid reputation amongst the commercial galleries and artists and started to introduce its credentials to the public sector such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Gallery, Tate, Royal Academy and other UK based art institutions.
In 1985, Momart commissioned the UK's first fine art vehicle with temperature control and air ride suspension and carried out its first museum job on behalf of the Royal Academy – a Henry Moore exhibition. Momart was by then able to undertake all of the transport handling requirements completely in-house, including making site visits to the individual lenders where required, case making, transport of the empty cases to the lenders, pack on site and delivery of the case loan to the borrower.
From 1988 Momart expanded the services to include the international movement of artworks on behalf of both commercial and museum clients overseas. This prompted close analysis and investigation of the various case making options and specifications and in 1991, in collaboration with Tate, the company assisted with the development and the standard specification for museum cases for touring exhibitions and for sending artworks worldwide. This was then presented at the Art in Transit Conference in Washington DC. [4]
Momart's client base continued to expand. In the late 1980s the company started working for the Royal Collection and, in 1993, in recognition of the high quality of service provided by Momart, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Momart as a Royal warrant holder.
In 2003 Momart invested in new premises in Leyton, with a new plant and equipment and room for expansion. This included a new state-of-the-art workshop, storage facilities and transport office with Hackney remaining as the office base for the project coordination, administration and some satellite warehousing. This investment improved efficiency and capacity for increased storage business. In the same year Momart was granted Listed Agent status with the Department for Transport (DfT) allowing certified Momart employees to carry out hand search procedures on client artworks to avoid the need for X-raying at the airport of departure.
In 2008 Momart was acquired by Falkland Islands Holdings (FIH), an international services group that owns services businesses focused on transport and logistics. Following the acquisition, Momart's key management and staff has continued to work within the group to drive the company's continued expansion, particularly in rapidly growing overseas markets. In that same year Momart's administrative offices were moved from Hackney to Whitechapel from where the company operated all of the administration, coordination, shipping, finance, and IT services.
In 2009 HMRC granted Momart the then-unique privilege amongst fine art transport companies to undertake all of its customs procedures in-house. In 2011, Momart was certified as an Authorised Economic Operator (AEO), enabling the company to simplify customs bureaucracy and speed up passage within the EU for their clients. [5] [6]
In 2013 the company relocated its head office to South Quay, East London where it currently resides. In 2016 Momart expanded its storage facilities in Leyton, East London, with a new purpose-built unit providing additional 2,500 square metres (27,000 sq ft) of specialist art storage space.[ citation needed ]
In 2001 Momart and five other international fine art transport agents founded the professional association ARTIM, whose members monitor each other's service levels both professionally and financially. ARTIM comprises the leading fine art agents worldwide who have the highest standards of service. Agents wishing to join ARTIM have to be voted in with a majority vote by the Founders' Committee before becoming members.[ citation needed ]
In the early hours of 24 May 2004 a fire broke out at the Cromwell industrial estate in Leyton, east London. According to the fire investigation report, the flames that caught between 1.45 am and 3.15 am that morning were started deliberately, after burglars broke into a unit located at the extreme south-western corner of the estate and leased to an individual business repairing consumer electronics.
The fire spread through the adjoining units at the estate, eventually reaching and destroying a warehouse then operated by Momart. [7] The blaze destroyed more than 100 works by some of Britain's leading contemporary artists including Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Helen Chadwick and others. [7] [8] Many of those works were owned by Charles Saatchi, the country's biggest collector of modern art. [7]
Art industry insiders noted at the time that the insurance value of the works lost in the fire would be many times their initial purchase price, and that a comparable rise could be expected in the market values of the remaining and future works by artists whose works were lost. The total value of artworks lost was estimated at between £30 and £50 million.
A number of artists, in a joint action with several insurance firms, alleged negligence and pursued a legal case against Momart. The case was settled out of court in a mediated agreement for an undisclosed fee, reported to be in the order of "tens of millions of pounds". [9]
The tradition of the Christmas card goes back to 1984 when the first object – a festive card – was designed for the company by Bruce McLean. Since then Momart collaborated on this project with many of the top British and international artists. The complete series of Momart Christmas card is now part of the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate.
The artists represented in past Christmas cards are:
The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.
Dame Tracey Karima Emin is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn appliqué. Once the "enfant terrible" of the Young British Artists in the 1980s, Tracey Emin is now a Royal Academician.
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at US$384 million in the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.
Charles Saatchi is an Iraqi-British businessman and the co-founder, with his brother Maurice, of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led the business – the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s – until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year, the brothers formed a new agency called M&C Saatchi.
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and began a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged in 1988. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, sculpture, collage and found objects.
The year 2004 in art involved some significant events and new art works.
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005 and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
Carl Freedman is the founder of Carl Freedman Gallery. He previously worked as a writer and a curator.
Art intervention is an interaction with a previously existing artwork, audience, venue/space or situation. It is in the category of conceptual art and is commonly a form of performance art. It is associated with Letterist International, Situationist International, Viennese Actionists, the Dada movement and Neo-Dadaists. More latterly, intervention art has delivered Guerrilla art, street art plus the Stuckists have made extensive use of it to affect perceptions of artworks they oppose and as a protest against existing interventions.
Adrian Searle is an art critic for The Guardian, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter.
Stuckist demonstrations since 2000 have been a key part of the Stuckist art group's activities and have succeeded in giving them a high-profile both in Britain and abroad. Their primary agenda is the promotion of figurative painting and opposition to conceptual art.
Sarah Kent is a British art critic, formerly art editor of the weekly London "what's on" guide Time Out. She was an early supporter of the Young British Artists in general, and Tracey Emin in particular, helping Emin to get exposure. This has led to polarised reactions of praise and opposition for Kent. She adopts a feminist stance and has stated her position to be that of "a spokesperson, especially for women artists, in a country that is essentially hostile to contemporary art."
William Redgrave (1903–1986) was a British sculptor. His major work The Event was mostly destroyed in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire.
The Little Artists are John Cake and Darren Neave. They create versions of well known contemporary artworks and art personalities in miniature using toy Lego bricks. They also produce a range of merchandise. They describe themselves as conceptual artists. Their work is collected by Charles Saatchi.
Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in the 1980s and 1990s that emerged out of the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These subsequent initiatives included the Moscow Conceptualists, the United States Neo-Conceptual artists, such as Sherrie Levine, and the Young British Artists, such as Damien Hirst.
The Stuckism International Gallery was the gallery of the Stuckist art movement. It was open from 2002 to 2005 in Shoreditch, and was run by Charles Thomson, the co-founder of Stuckism. It was launched by a procession carrying a coffin marked "The death of conceptual art" to the neighbouring White Cube gallery.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is an artwork created in 1991 by Damien Hirst, an English artist and a leading member of the "Young British Artists". It consists of a preserved tiger shark submerged in formalin in a glass-panel display case.
Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), also known as The Tent, was an artwork by Tracey Emin. The work was a tent with the appliquéd names of, literally, everyone she had ever slept with. It achieved iconic status and was owned by Charles Saatchi. Since its destruction in the 2004 Momart London warehouse fire, Emin has refused to recreate the piece.
Gregor Muir is Director of Collection, International Art, at Tate, having previously been the Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 2011 to 2016. He was the director of Hauser & Wirth, London, at 196a Piccadilly, from 2004 to 2011. He is also the author of a 2009 memoir in which he recounts his direct experience of the YBA art scene in 1990s London.