Suzanne Rose. Submitted.
Having spent 35 years as an art photographer, Suzanne Rose considers herself an artist first and foremost. But she has also curated exhibits, written a regular column on art-related topics, and recently, added another adjacent skill to her roster: fine art appraisal.
“I’m an artist, appraiser, curator and journalist, and I feel that all of these are in synergy together,” she said. “Seeing the art world from a different vantage point is making me a smarter artist.”
Training to qualify as a member of the International Society of Appraisers opened her eyes to the pricing and marketing of fine art, a part of the art world that she previously hadn’t paid much attention to.
She found it all fascinating: “the pricing, the way that it goes to auction, and the way that it really does become part of a historic legacy for an artist. How and why things become valuable, and how they’re assessed.”
In 2024, she founded Room Service, an appraisal and fine art services company serving Door County and northeastern Wisconsin. The company provides appraisals compliant with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice.
Calls for a fine art appraisal can come from an insurance company, co-owners of art in an estate, people going through a divorce settlement, or fans of Antiques Roadshow who want to know if a family heirloom is valuable.
Rose recently got a request to examine a jade figure a relative had brought back from Japan after World War II.
“It was absolutely lovely with a Japanese aesthetic, which is minimal, and sometimes almost Cubist,” she said. “But even from the iPhone picture, I could see the casting marks of a resin figure. I did a little research on eBay and learned these were mass-produced for the tourist trade. I called around in Green Bay and found a high-end antiques dealer who would discuss the piece with the owner.”
She suggested the family write up a bit about what they learned and save the description with the piece as part of family lore. She didn’t take this research as a job.
“I’m really about educating and assisting,” Rose said. “I’ll take an hour to look online, and I’ll take another 30 minutes to compose a professional email thumbnail and give them advice, and there’ll be no charge because I think it’s really important for people just to understand these things do have value, but not necessarily always monetary. If this has been in your home since you’ve been a child, you can appreciate what it’s given you over that time. I mean, that’s priceless, you know?”
Christine Anderson, the fine art appraiser at Guardian Fine Art Services in Milwaukee, said people are often disappointed at the value of a collectible that has been in the family for a long time.
“If it was something their parents collected and always had a special story, they are apt to think it is worth more than it is,” Anderson said. “Nine times out of 20, it is not in great condition anymore, and the market is constantly changing. Kids don’t necessarily want the things their parents collected.’’
Anderson is a fan of Antiques Road Show, but she watches it for entertainment, not education.
“They may look at hundreds, or a thousand items, to fill that one hour segment,” she said.
Door County art valuations are challenging. In the larger art world, most prices are set at auctions within the last 20 to 30 years, and few Door County works get to major art auction houses.
“Auction prices really do dictate the current value of an artist’s secondary market work [work sold at any point after the first direct sale], and younger living artists tend not to have any auction history,” Rose said.
A real danger is that heirs will consign fine art to a general auction house, which lumps art in with antique furniture and miscellaneous other personal property, selling it for a fraction of its value.
“You could have a painting by Charles Peterson on the wall, that you got from your mother, and you don’t even realize that it’s a real painting,” Rose said. “Sometimes people don’t recognize the artists. A friend inherited a Henry Moore sculpture and a Henry Moore print. She had no idea who Henry Moore was, but her mom had that sculpture on her desk for years and didn’t know what it was.”
Recent purchase prices can also be useful in an appraisal, with the emphasis on “recent.” If you purchased a piece 50 years ago and the artist fell off the face of the earth, with no auction price and no gallery representation, then it’s just about the aesthetics and the quality of the work, Rose said.
Decades of immersion in the art world taught Rose that artists need to develop a portfolio of skills to be successful, she said.
“I think that if you’re getting an MFA [Master of Fine Arts degree] as a practicing artist, you have to make sure that you are multimedia,” she said.
By that, she means having a varied artistic skillset.
“It’s really important to cross over to other things,” Rose said. “You need to learn how to weld, how to cast. You need to be able to express yourself in almost any medium. I’ve worked with metals for 35 years.”
She also considers writing a necessary skill.
“It’s really important to strengthen your writing skills, and that doesn’t mean punching into ChatGPT,” she said. “It’s about being able to sit down and actually compose a proper statement that holds together and is actually worth reading. I’m really hard on upcoming artists because it’s a really competitive field, and I don’t think the world has patience.”
Preserving the Value of Fine Art
Where you hang your art makes a huge difference. Walls exposed to south-facing windows, which get the most direct and damaging sunlight, aren’t ideal display spots.
“It’s not just windows, but old incandescent lights can have the same effects,” she said.
The materials used in the piece itself also affect how it ages. Rose suggests checking the paint and the underlying base to understand its resilience or vulnerability to light, temperature, or handling. For example, oil paintings are more stable than watercolors, though there’s plenty of variation in the subcategory of oil paintings.
“There are a hundred different types of oil painting,” Rose said. “There’s oil paint that was handmade by a master, and there’s experimental oil paint. It gets applied to stretched canvas, loose canvas, masonite, and sometimes cardboard. The optimum display and the conservation challenges vary.”
How the piece is framed matters too.
“If you value this work, then it needs to be immediately removed from the non-archival frame, especially anything that was from the 1970s or earlier,” Rose said. “We live in Wisconsin, so it’s very humid, and it’s been through seasonal wear and tear.”
She suggests owners have their work unassembled, then re-framed to archival standards.
“Having quality framing is always very sobering [expensive], but it’s one of the most important things for your work,” she said. “And always splurge for museum glass.”
Preserving a piece of art involves more than just the physical. Rose advises owners to ensure their insurance policies are up to date and to establish the provenance of their pieces.
“It is important for collectors or generational owners [of inherited pieces] to maintain a narrative of accurate information of the origin of
purchase, artist bio, original cost, restoration history, exhibition
history, former ownership and more,” Rose wrote in an email. “This assists in establishing value and creates a log of information easily accessed.”
Some artists don’t value archival quality, or can’t afford it. Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning used to shop for paint at hardware stores, Rose said.
