How To Set Up Your Art Inventory

If you want to professionalize your artistic practice and business, it is essential to organize, document, and track every single artwork you acknowledge as a part of your oeuvre. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss why and how you need to organize your art by setting up an overview document—which is both your inventory and so-called catalogue raisonné—providing clear instructions and industry-approved guidelines, offering a ready-to-use template to professionalize your art business in minutes.

Organizing your art or setting up your inventory might sound like an inferior, tedious, or perhaps even difficult and redundant task. However, it is the backbone of your entire body of work and is much easier to create and maintain than one might think. Sooner or later in your career, an art gallery, curator, or museum will ask for an overview document of all the work you have ever created that is part of your official oeuvre.

Of course, this document will only become important when you are a bit more established and in demand in the art world. As a result, you might think this is something you should only consider later in your career when you become more serious and renowned as an artist. However, depending on how long you have been active—producing, selling, and exhibiting your work—it might already be too late to document and track your entire history of artistic activity. Therefore, it is crucial to prepare, track, and update this document from day one to have a complete and accurate overview.

Having worked on the archives for the Jan Vercruysse Foundation and as a senior in cataloging for the Ghent University Library, I am pleased to share my expertise and in-field experience to empower artists to professionalize your art business. So let us start with why most renowned and professional artists have such a document, how you should set it up, what it should include, and how to maintain it throughout the years. It is more important than you would imagine, but simultaneously, it is much easier than one might think.

Why Do I Need an Art Inventory/Overview Document?

First and foremost, the inventory or overview is a great personal tool. It enables you to filter your oeuvre—and possibly kill your darlings—as your oeuvre advances and develops. You have a clear overview of everything you have created, where the artworks are, where they were exhibited or discussed, and what their metadata is. As a result, it also enables you to understand your oeuvre better. With a single document, you can delve into years of work and gain insight into your development.

Further, it is a great document to have in your studio that leaves a professional impression on visiting collectors and galleries. You can see your selling history, but also your (upward) price trend. It transparently communicates to collectors and galleries you trust which works you currently have available and how your previous works did in the past. Therefore, this document will also be the backbone of your entire oeuvre and your legacy as an artist.

For instance, the document in question is used as the foundation for future institutional exhibitions. If you have the opportunity to have a museum exhibition presenting an overview of some of your most important and best works of the past few years, the overview document will be the starting point of the selection in collaboration with the curator. In this case, you will also need to know exactly where those artworks are—which is especially important when they have been sold for a couple of years. In this case, the inventory/overview document will provide all the information you need to work professionally and efficiently. So not only will you leave a good impression, but it will also contribute to the exhibition, and thus to your art career and legacy.

Another example is at the end of your career when you wish to create a complete catalogue raisonné or overview publication, compiling your entire oeuvre as a celebration of all the art you have given to the world and as an art historical statement—whether you are an international art superstar published by renowned institutions, gallery, or art publisher, or an artist with modest successes who self-publishes this catalog. So regardless of whether being established or not, being established in the future or not, to professionalize your career and to be able to organize and control the art you have called into this world, you will need an inventory or oeuvre overview.

How To Set Up an Inventory/Overview Document

So now that we have addressed why you should set up and maintain this document, it is time to discuss how to do this in the best way possible. Here, I can start with some good news: it is really easy to set up and maintain. A simple Word document or Excel file is sufficient. There are numerous expensive database software subscriptions or expensive tools and services to take care of your inventory; however, opting for these expensive approaches is rather excessive and unnecessary. If the time comes you need a more advanced database solution for your oeuvre; you will have a gallery, foundation, estate, or institution taking care of these things. In the meantime, a single Word or Excel document is required simply to keep track of and document all the required information.

The overall structure is a simple table, listing the artworks chronologically in ascending order from old to new. The table consists of the following columns—which will be discussed more extensively below—(i) a catalog or inventory number, (ii) the image of an artwork, (iii) the title of the artwork, (iv) the year(s) the artwork was created, (v) the medium, surface, or other materials, (vi) the dimensions of the artwork, (vii) the current location or collection of the artwork and the provenance or history of the artwork, (viii) the exhibition history, (ix) the bibliography of the artwork, (x) the listed retail price or the realized price for which it was sold, (xi) and to conclude the current status of the work.

To avoid making any mistakes or simply to save some time, we are pleased to present our industry-approved Inventory-Overview-Catalogue Raisonné Template (Word, PDF & Excel). We offer this template at a very modest price but feel free to read the instructions below to set up your own document. Please note that not only the required information is essential here, but also the additional instructions discussing the industry-approved standards on how you should keep your inventory, what information you must include, and using which structure.

Discover the current price here.

1. Catalog number

It is advised to attribute a unique catalog number or inventory number to every single artwork. By doing so, you can refer to specific pieces without making any mistakes—which is especially useful if your works often have the duplicate titles or sizes. A commonly used numerical system is to write down ‘CR,’ which stands for Catalogue Raisonné, followed by the year the artwork was created and the number of artworks from that year. With this system, you can not go wrong. However, feel free to use a different numerical system if it would fit your work better.

E.g., CR-22-05

2. Image

It is essential to insert an image of the artwork in question, especially if your pieces are often untitled. Here, you should only insert a picture of the artwork, meaning cropping out the wall or background. Do not use installation views or, even worse, pictures of the artwork in an interior. Make sure the image is a thumbnail size so your table does not get messed up and the document won’t get too big, as numerous pieces can fit into a single page. However, feel free to insert the image in high resolution. If you lose your initial images, you can always retrieve them here in the overview document.

3. Title

Insert the title of the artwork in question. Make sure to specify the untitled pieces with numbers or by including the catalog number next to the tartwork’s title. Doing so, can avoid confusion and refer to the exact artwork with your business partners or future collectors.

E.g., Untitled (No. 5)

4. Year

Write down the year—or perhaps even multiple years from start to finish—in which the artwork was created. You could add the month, but this is not common or necessary.

E.g., 2021-2022

5. Medium/materials

Write down your medium, surface, frame, or any other material attributes used for this artwork. As a result, do not write down ‘mixed media,’ but specify all the different media you have used. If the artwork is part of an edition, this is also the right place to specify this edition.

E.g. 1, Acryl paint, charcoal, oil pastel, sand, and varnish on linen canvas. Wooden artist frame.
E.g. 2, Giclée print on Hahnemuhle paper. Edition of 6 + AP’s.

6. Dimensions

Enter all three dimensions, preferably both in centimeters and inches. This means you should also aim to include the depth of two-dimensional objects such as paintings and drawings. With works that are framed—most often works on paper—in which the artwork can be detached from the frame, please write down the dimensions of the artwork and when being framed separately.

E.g. 1, 40 x 40 x 5 cm / 16 x 16 x 2 in
E.g. 2, 40 x 40 cm / 16 x 16 in (paper). 50 x 50 x 2.5 cm / 20 x 20 x 1 in (framed)

7. Collection/location/provenance

Next, it is essential to document the current location of the artwork. This can become incredibly important when galleries store your unsold works, and the sold works enter their new homes. Therefore, we must write the storage location or the collection that acquired the artwork in our inventory. Feel free to add contact details or make sure you have the details of the collection in question in your central contact list. If your artwork has moved to multiple collections, list the provenance chronologically in descending order, showing its current location/collection at the top.

E.g. 1, Artist studio in New York City, US
E.g. 2, Storage of Galleria Continua in Paris, FR
E.g. 3, Collection Tate Modern in London, UK

8. Exhibition history

Here, we must list all the exhibitions where the artwork has been exhibited throughout its existence, chronologically, in descending order, showcasing the most recent exhibition at the top. Make sure to use an industry-approved structure to write down the exhibition, encompassing its title, venue, city, and country.

E.g., Michaël Borremans: Coloured Cones, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, BE / Michaël Borremans: The Duck, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, CZ

9. Bibliography

The bibliography of the artwork consists of all publications in which it has been featured or discussed, encompassing books, magazines, online articles, or exhibition catalogs. List the bibliographic entries chronologically in descending order and refer to them using an academic reference system such as Chicago or APA.

E.g., Laura Cumming et al., Y.Z. Kami: Works 1985-2018. Verona: Skira Editore, 2019. / Artforum, “Y.Z. Kami” at https://www.artforum.com/features/openings-y-z-kami-202662/ consulted October 27, 2018.

10. (Realized) Price

This section consists of the current retail price for the artwork in question or the price at which it was sold. Make sure to include the year of the sale, as prices will change over time, and which dealer or entity arranged the sale. If a single piece has been sold multiple times via the secondary market, monitor this activity and include it in your inventory. If the artwork was gifted to a specific collection, write down n/a for not applicable.

E.g., $60,000 (Christie’s, London, UK, 2022) / $20,000 (private sale, 2019) / $4,000 (Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, BE, 2015)

11. Status

We conclude with the current status of the artwork. Possible options here are Available, Unavailable, Sold, Gifted, or Destroyed.

How To Maintain Your Art Inventory

The great thing about using a single document is the ease-of-use and low maintanence. In essence, there only five moments when you have to update this document:

1. When finishing new work
2. At the end of an exhibition
3. In case of a sale or gift (both for the primary and secondary market)
4. In case of a publication
5. When you filter or destroy works

Make sure to have a look at which other documents your art business requires next, by consulting our selection of career tools and documents for artists or our overview page with career advice for artists.

Last Updated on October 1, 2024