Philosophy and Company Profile

Value beyond the market

Value does not coincide with market price. The market establishes a price, it does not certify cultural value or authenticity. A work can reach high figures while being attributed uncertainly; another may possess historical relevance independently of its market price. Value is not a given, it requires judgment.

Decisions produce consequences. Works are authenticated, acquired, preserved, and exhibited within a collection. These choices often occur under conditions of incomplete or subsequent verification. The result is not only a problem of knowledge, but of consequences: fragile attributions, inappropriate conservation interventions, collections built on fragile documentary foundations. When a decision affects a collection, the effect is irreversible.

A decision requires accountability. A choice that produces permanent effects must be attributable to an identifiable author. If the author is not identifiable, the decision remains an opinion; when it is documented and traceable to the person who made it, it becomes verifiable over time. For a cultural choice to be evaluable, there must be an explicit link between decision, documentation, and author. Without accountability, a collection depends on opinions; with it, it becomes an object of knowledge.

Company Profile

Art Consulting was founded in Milan in 1999 by Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio, who continue to provide its curatorial and operational direction.

The Company Profile. The document below presents thirty years of projects on private, corporate, and museum collections, government assignments, and cultural master plans. Accountability and method do not change with context: scale and constraints change, not the decision-making principle. We operate as scientific direction in private, corporate, and institutional contexts when it is necessary to establish or reorganize art collections according to long-term cultural strategies. We manage the entire process: from defining criteria to operational collection management, from single acquisitions to multi-year government master plans. Decision-making accountability remains personally assumed by the directors, not delegated to external parties.

Method and criteria. Intervention criteria are defined case-by-case based on mandate objectives and made verifiable through documentation, publications, and presentations. Every decision is signed and archived. The method combines thirty years of museum-level rigor with operational capacity in complex private, corporate, public, and government contexts.

Scale and typology of mandates. From collection screening to artwork verification and coordination of the attribution process, to scientific direction of permanent institutional collections. Among projects: site-specific collection commissioned for New York University Abu Dhabi, public artworks for Expo 2020 Dubai, acquisitions for museum institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Projects with governments (United Arab Emirates, India), international universities, sovereign funds, national museums.

Verifiable documentation. Thirty years of projects documented through curated exhibitions, scholarly publications, government appointments, and multi-year museum directorships (Museo Treccani Milano, Fondazione Pellin, Fondazione Bandera). The Company Profile below gathers operational methodology, case material, and institutional track record for collection directors, corporate executives, and evaluation committees.