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The hospital I work at was looking at cost saving measures. Someone realized we were paying $65k a year in art insurance. Generous people would loan the art t
by giarc 7y ago
The hospital I work at was looking at cost saving measures. Someone realized we were paying $65k a year in art insurance. Generous people would loan the art to the hospital on the condition that the hospital would insure it. When times were good, the hospital had no issue paying for the insurance, but once we had to cut costs, it became clear we couldn't be a free art storage facility for citizens. They inventoried everything, returned pieces that they no longer felt like insuring.
- awillen 7y agoThat does sound like a pretty insane recurring cost. Doesn't seem like there's any need for really valuable art that requires insurance when murals, photos and reproductions of the same nice art would do it. Hopefully they just replaced that all with something much cheaper.
- giarc 7y agoI think you could deduce that no pieces would be of substantial value. No one would loan a valuable piece to a hospital knowing that it's likely going to be put in a public hallway and potentially touched or damaged many times a day.
- awillen 7y agoIf you're paying 65k for insurance, the pieces are valuable. They could well be behind glass or protected in other ways.
- TylerE 7y agoI think you're underestimating how big even a "small" hospital can be. That $65k could easily be covering thousands of works.
- Fomite 7y agoThis. Our small rural community hospital with two ICU beds is one of the largest buildings and employers in the area.
- giarc 7y agoI work at an 1100 bed hospital, the largest in Western Canada. We have 7 buildings on site, which is a lot of square feet. Additionally, when an insurance company sees the government as a client, I'm sure the pricing gets jacked a bit.
- dgudkov 7y agoIt sounds like the type of expensive art that would be relevant rather in an investment bank than in a public hospital. A decent non-trivial local artist's painting typically costs around $2000. $65K spent locally could've been a good gift for the local art community.
- giarc 7y agoThere likely weren't any high value paintings seeing as how they would be publicly displayed in a hospital, however, we are a very large hospital, so there were quite a number of pieces. Lots were just in storage as we didn't have anywhere to put them.