Modern Art Share - The idea

You love your paintings, but you’d also like to change things up from time to time. You set up appointments for Modern Art Share to pick up your painting and to deliver your new piece. An MAS representative shows up, evaluates the condition of your painting, gets your signoff, and takes it away for someone else’s later enjoyment. A few days later another representative will stop by to drop off the art you will be borrowing. You repeat the process of swapping art every few months until you want your originals back.

The process is fairly simple. When everything goes well, MAS picks up a piece of art and ships it to a customer or takes it to a warehouse for temporary storage. Renting art has two part pricing: a mostly fixed cost for delivering and taking back the art, and the rental cost per month of the piece. The monthly cost will be dependent on the value and demand for the piece. The prices could range from $100 to $1,000 a month for various pieces. If you let someone borrow a piece, you get to take a cut of revenue (about 50%).  Art owners could also keep their art in their houses until someone wants to rent it, and only ship it out at that point.

One important aspect would be damages. It’s important that each piece is appraised before any transaction occurs so that the necessary level of care can be determined and any impacts to the piece can be documented at all stages. In particular, the condition of the piece should be precisely determined before it’s shipped because small accidents during transport or in the renter’s home could result in large value losses. It would make sense for an MAS representative to come by to see the piece before it is moved so that it can be appraised and so that high quality pictures can be taken so others can decide if they’d like to rent it.