Informed judgment. Independent perspective.

The practice brings together art-market research, appraisal methodology, curatorial experience, and more than two decades of working with art and the people who collect, advise on, exhibit, insure, inherit, buy, and sell it.

OUR APPROACH

The question determines the work.

Art-related assignments can look deceptively simple.

What is this worth? Should I buy it? Should we sell it? What exactly does the estate own? What should be insured? Is the documentation complete? What belongs in this collection?

The useful answer often depends on questions that come before those.

What is the purpose? What evidence exists? What remains uncertain? Which market matters? Which specialist, if any, should become involved? What decision will ultimately be made using the information?

Ron Shipmon LLC begins there.

RESEARCH BEFORE ASSUMPTION

Evidence matters more than a good story.

Art comes with narratives.

A family history. A gallery label. A famous name. An old invoice. A previous appraisal. An impressive auction result. A story about where the work came from.

Any of these may be useful. None should be accepted automatically.

Our work distinguishes between what is known, what is supported by available evidence, what remains uncertain, and what may require additional expertise.

That distinction is fundamental to both appraisal and advisory work.

INDEPENDENT JUDGMENT

The objective is not to confirm what someone hopes to hear.

An appraisal should not be designed to reach a preferred number.

Advisory work should not be designed merely to complete a transaction.

Research should not turn an attractive assumption into a fact.

Professional judgment has value precisely because it may occasionally complicate the expected answer.

The responsibility is to determine what the available evidence supports and communicate that clearly.

A PRACTICE BUILT ACROSS THE ART WORLD

Experience on more than one side of the market.

Ron Shipmon’s career has included:

• Art appraisal
• Art advisory
• Corporate curatorial work
• Gallery management
• Private collecting
• Arts writing
• Exhibition development
• Work with contemporary and emerging artists
• Art-market research
• Collection development and stewardship

That range matters.

An appraisal benefits from understanding how works actually trade. Advisory work benefits from knowing how institutions and galleries think. Curatorial work benefits from understanding collectors. Collection management benefits from knowing which records will matter years later.

Each part of the practice informs the others.

WHO WE SERVE

Private Collectors

Collectors building, reviewing, documenting, insuring, appraising, buying, or selling works of art.

Estates & Families

Families and executors dealing with inherited collections, estate administration, valuation, documentation, division, donation, or sale.

Attorneys & Fiduciaries

Professional advisors requiring independent appraisal or art-related expertise within a broader client matter.

Insurance Professionals

Brokers, adjusters, claims professionals, and private-client advisors dealing with valuable art and significant personal property.

Family Offices & Wealth Advisors

Professionals helping clients manage, document, transfer, insure, donate, or make decisions about collections.

Corporations & Institutions

Organizations developing, documenting, curating, reviewing, or managing art collections and exhibition programs.

CONTEMPORARY, EMERGING & DIGITAL ART

A longstanding interest in markets that are still being written.

Ron Shipmon LLC has particular experience and interest in contemporary, emerging, and digital art.

These markets can present different challenges from more established areas.

Scholarship may still be developing. Auction history may be limited. Primary-market pricing may carry more weight. Artists’ careers may be changing quickly. Institutional interest may precede market consensus—or the reverse. Digital works may introduce additional issues involving format, editioning, custody, platform dependence, and evolving standards.

Experience in these areas requires comfort with uncertainty without turning uncertainty into speculation.

UNDERREPRESENTED ARTISTS

Broadening the field has been part of the work from the beginning.

Ron Shipmon’s career has included a longstanding commitment to artists and histories that have not always received equal access to galleries, institutions, collectors, and broader art-market recognition.

That perspective has informed his gallery work, corporate exhibitions, curatorial practice, writing, and collecting.

It is not a separate initiative added to the practice. It is part of the way the art world has been understood throughout his career.

DISCRETION

Art matters are often private matters.

Collections can involve family wealth, estates, insurance claims, private sales, negotiations, personal relationships, and information that has no reason to become public.

Ron Shipmon LLC handles client information, collection records, research, and recommendations with discretion appropriate to the engagement.

Where outside specialists are required, their role and access should be defined in relation to the assignment.

PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION

One discipline should not pretend to be another.

Art-related matters may involve attorneys, accountants, fiduciaries, insurance professionals, conservators, registrars, art handlers, auction specialists, dealers, scholars, artist foundations, authenticators, tax professionals, and collection managers.

A good engagement identifies when those disciplines intersect.

Ron Shipmon LLC works independently while collaborating with the client’s existing professional advisors and appropriate outside specialists when the assignment requires it.

THE PRINCIPAL

Ron Shipmon

Art collector. Curator. Art advisor. Arts writer. USPAP-certified appraiser.

For more than two decades, Ron Shipmon has worked across the contemporary, emerging, and digital art markets.

His experience includes curating the GE Capital and Financial Guaranty Insurance Company collections, developing Colgate-Palmolive’s first in-house exhibition program, managing galleries in London, founding The American Gallery in New York, advising private and corporate clients, and writing about art and the forces that shape its value.

His work is defined less by a single role than by the perspective created from having occupied several of them.

Read Ron Shipmon’s Biography →

RECOGNITION

Selected recognition

• 2023 NAACP David Weaver Award for Excellence in the Arts
• Castillo Theatre Award of Artistic Merit in Supporting the Arts
• Manhattan Borough President proclamation recognizing contributions to the visual arts community
• NY1 New Yorker of the Week

CONTACT

Begin with the matter.

If you have an appraisal, collection, acquisition, sale, estate, claim, donation, or other art-related question, contact Ron Shipmon LLC to discuss what the matter requires.

Book an Appointment →