Galleries send their inventory lists ahead of the fair. Each exhibitor becomes a sub-project under the fair project, so every exhibitor's items, transactions and charges stay separate.
Pieces are scanned against the pre-advised list, photographed, described and labeled with barcodes or QR codes. Anything missing or unexpected stands out at the dock.
Condition reporting with photos is captured in the Inventory app on arrival and timestamped on each item. That's your evidence if there's freight damage to claim.
Items and crates are put away by location and staged by booth. Every piece stays linked to the crate it arrived in, and custom crating is available for delicate objects.
Items are scanned out to the loading area, delivered to each booth, unpacked, placed and checked off in the app. Empty crates are tracked to their storage location for the duration of the show.
Sold works move to a release for their new owner, and works headed to another fair or venue are rerouted on their own transaction, each with its own paperwork. Every item's status shows whether it's at the booth, sold, rerouted or returning.
Crates are retrieved from storage and the app tells the crew which crate each piece goes back into. Every piece is scanned back into its original crate.
Unsold works ship back to galleries, sold works go to their buyers with a signature, and each exhibitor is invoiced from its own tariff.
Art fairs compress weeks of fine art logistics into a few days. Works arrive from dozens of galleries at once, some of them already in your warehouse. Pieces are unpacked at the booth and crates go into storage for the duration of the fair. Then the inventory changes hands: works are sold, released to new owners, rerouted to other venues or shipped back to the gallery. At teardown, everything has to go back into its original crate and onto the right shipment. One mix-up costs you the client. Art Manager keeps each exhibitor's inventory separate from the first receive-in to the last release, so install and teardown run from a scan, not a clipboard.
How Art Manager handles it:
- Each exhibitor is its own sub-project: inventory, transactions and charges stay separate, while you still see the whole event in one place.
- Receive against what was announced: exhibitors' inventory is entered ahead of time or imported from a file, so missing or unexpected pieces stand out at the dock.
- Items stay matched to their crates: every piece is linked to the crate it arrived in, and at teardown the app tells the crew which crate each piece goes back into.
- Booth install from a scan: each item carries its booth location, and crews scan items out, deliver them and check off placement in the app.
- Sold, returned or shipped onward, each on its own paperwork: sold works move to a release for the new owner, unsold works go on the return shipment.
- Bill every exhibitor from one event: charges are tracked per exhibitor and invoiced from each client's tariff.
You don't have to switch everything on at once. Start with labeling and scanning for your next show, and add quoting, client portals and billing when you're ready. We'll help you fit Art Manager to the way your team already works.
