Feature
Multi-location inventory: knowing where each work actually is
A gallery with one space and ten works knows where everything is by walking around. A gallery with two spaces, an off-site storage facility, three works at the framer, four works in transit to Hong Kong, and a museum loan in Berlin needs a system. This guide explains how to model location and custody so the answer to "where is the Mary Smith?" is one search, not three phone calls.
What "location" means in a working gallery
Location is not a string field. It is the most recent custody event in a chain of dated events: the work was at the gallery's main space; on 2026-03-12 the registrar sent it to the framer; on 2026-03-19 the framer returned it; on 2026-03-25 it shipped to the booth at TEFAF; on 2026-04-09 it returned to off-site storage. Each move is a real event with a date, a from-location, a to-location, and the staff member who recorded it.
The current location is the most recent event's to-location. The history is the full chain. The insurance value, the customs paperwork, the condition report on each leg, all attach to the events, not to a static field.
The five locations every gallery actually has
Galleries that scale past one space tend to converge on the same five categories. Modelling them explicitly (rather than as freeform text) is what makes search and reporting work.
- Owned spaces. The main gallery, the project room, the secondary location. Named (not addressed) in the system because everyone knows what "main space" means; nobody wants to retype the street address in chat.
- Storage. Off-site fine-art storage (CGS, Crozier, in-house), with bay or rack identifiers if the gallery uses them. Most works spend most of their life here.
- External services. Framer, conservator, photographer, mounting workshop. Each is a named location attached to a real contact with hours, drop-off rules, and the staff member responsible.
- Fairs and exhibitions. TEFAF Maastricht, Frieze London, ABMB, the museum show in Berlin. Each is a location with dates; the work's presence at the fair is bounded by the fair's dates.
- Loans (in and out). Works lent to museums or borrowed from collectors. The lender or borrower is the responsible party for the duration; the location tracks where the work physically sits.
Where Excel and a whiteboard break for location
Excel can hold a "location" column on a work. It cannot hold a chain of custody events with dates, photos, and signed-off-by fields. The result is that the column becomes the most recent thing the registrar typed, with no history of how the work got there.
A whiteboard works in one room and stops working the moment the gallery has off-site storage. The director on a plane cannot see the whiteboard; the associate in the booth cannot see the whiteboard; the registrar at the framer cannot update it. The whiteboard model survives until the second space.
The third common pattern is "the registrar always knows". This works while the registrar is at their desk and stops working the moment they take a holiday. Institutional memory in one head is institutional memory the gallery loses every Friday afternoon.
A real flow: a work that travels from storage to TEFAF and back
A 1.8m painting on consignment, currently in off-site storage. The gallery is showing it at TEFAF Maastricht. Here is the custody chain.
- Day -21: Pull from storage. Registrar marks "from storage to gallery main space" with a custody event, condition photos taken on receipt at the gallery.
- Day -14: To framer for new mount. "From gallery to framer" event, condition photos confirming pre-framer state.
- Day -7: Returned from framer. "From framer to gallery" event, photos confirming the new mount, framer's invoice attached.
- Day -3: Pre-ship pack and condition report. "From gallery to fine-art shipper" event, full pre-ship condition report with crating photos.
- Day 0: Receipt at TEFAF booth. "From shipper to TEFAF Maastricht booth" event, on-receipt condition report comparing to pre-ship baseline.
- Day +7: Fair closes. Work did not sell. "From TEFAF to fine-art shipper" event, post-show condition report.
- Day +12: Back at storage. "From shipper to off-site storage" event, return condition report comparing to original baseline. Insurance value updated for the new mount.
How Art.industries handles multi-location custody
Custody events are first-class records on the work. Each event records the from-location, to-location, date, transporter (when applicable), staff member, and any attached condition report or shipping documents. The work's current location is computed from the most recent event; the history is one view.
Locations are entities with their own records: address, hours, contact, special instructions (loading-bay restrictions at the fair, climate-control specs at storage). Adding a new framer or conservator is a one-time setup, not a per-shipment retype.
The location view across all works ("everything currently at TEFAF Maastricht booth", "everything at the framer right now") is a real query, used by the registrar before fair takedown and by the gallery director on a Friday afternoon to understand what is in flight. Reservations, loans, and consignor visibility all read from the same custody data.
For high-value works, custody changes can require photo confirmation at handover (works in transit are tracked through the shipper's integration where supported, with carrier waybills attached automatically).
Permissions: who can move what
In a small gallery, anyone can mark a custody change. In a larger one, this is a problem: an associate marking a work as "returned from storage" without actually opening the crate is the kind of mistake that loses lender trust.
Art.industries supports per-event approval rules: high-value works (over a configurable threshold) require a director sign-off on custody changes; loaned-in works require photo evidence at receipt; routine moves between owned spaces are allowed for any staff member. The audit trail is permanent.
When a work goes missing
Sometimes a work is genuinely missing: the courier delivered it but nobody can find it; the framer says it was returned but it is not in the storage rack; the post-fair return is incomplete. In every case, the question is "what was the last confirmed custody event?" and "what should have happened next?"
A clean custody chain answers these in seconds. The last confirmed event was the shipper's receipt at the storage facility on the 12th. The missing event is the storage facility's confirmation of bay placement. The conversation with the storage facility is now grounded in dates and photos, not "we think we sent it last Tuesday".
FAQ
- Can a single work be in two locations at once (e.g. an edition with two copies in different places)?
- A single work record exists in one place at a time; an editioned work has multiple edition copies, each with its own custody chain. So 1/5 can be at storage while 2/5 is at the buyer's home; the edition copy model handles this without forcing duplicate records.
- How does this connect to viewing rooms? Will a room show a work as available if it is at the framer?
- The room reads the work's availability flag, which is independent of physical location. A work at the framer can still be reserved and shown in a room; the gallery sees the framer custody event in the work's sidebar and can warn the collector about timing if the framer return is uncertain.
- Can we bulk-update custody for an entire shipment (e.g. 30 works back from a fair)?
- Yes. The post-fair return flow lets the registrar mark all works on the shipment as received at the gallery (or at storage) in one operation, with a shared receipt-side condition pass. Per-work overrides catch the works that need individual attention.
- Can the consignor see where their works currently are?
- Yes, in the consignor's private artist view. They see current location and a high-level custody history (current state, in transit, at gallery, at fair). Detailed shipping notes and contact information stay gallery-side.
- How are works marked as "missing" handled?
- A work without a confirmed custody event for more than a configurable period (e.g. 14 days at an external service) surfaces as a stale-custody flag for the registrar. The gallery can mark a work as "investigating" with a note; the audit trail records the open question.
- Does this work for international fair logistics with ATA Carnets?
- Yes. Custody events tied to international shipments include the ATA Carnet reference, the customs entry date, and the re-export date, generated from the same export workflow. The customs broker reads from the same data the wall labels do.
- How does this scale for galleries with 5,000+ works across multiple sites?
- Custody events are indexed; a 5,000-work gallery with multiple locations sees current-location queries return in under a second. Bulk custody operations (post-fair returns, storage reorganisation, year-end audit) are one operation, not 5,000.
Track one shipment end to end in the trial
Pick the next work going to a framer, a fair, or a buyer. Record the custody chain in the trial. By the time it returns, you will have one record where the registrar, the director, and the consignor all read the same answer.