Figure 2: The Vastari team, October 2013 (l-r Bernadine Brocker, Francesca Polo, Angela Roldan, Marta Olszewska)
Led by an all-female team, Vastari is a unique online platform designed to connect collectors and curators for exhibition loans. Founded in 2013, Vastari has already registered over 150 museums, including five of the top ten most visited worldwide, and has access to over 400,000 separate works.
Vastari has just completed a significant investment by Jenson Funding Partners via their Jenson Seed EIS Fund 2 in order to facilitate the next phase of growth for the business.
“The art world is in a communication crisis,” states CEO Bernadine Brocker. “On one hand are museums, who need to put together more exhibitions to increase revenue, generate footfall and raise their profile with the public. On the other hand are collectors, who own objects that they would love to lend to museum exhibitions, to raise their value as well as save on costs.”
Until now the process of connecting art owners and curators has been done mostly offline and has required large amounts of resource and time with little guarantee of success. With Vastari collectors can anonymously register works that will only be available for verified and accredited institutions that can search the database knowing that these collectors are predisposed to lend. Vastari has a secure and anonymous forum that provides institutions with increased efficiency and broader reach during the exhibition curating process and at the same time enables the collector to increase the exposure of their works, improving both providence and value. In addition to the philanthropic benefits there can also be tax advantages for collectors, including the UK Tax Exemption Scheme for Heritage Assets that are made publicly accessible. By taking an obsolete offline practice and bringing it online, Vastari is bridging the channel between these two parties and making the process more efficient and the communication channel between the various parties much more effective.
If you are interested in joining the select group of people taking advantage of Vastari’s worldwide platform you can register here.
