I’ve never broken anything of exceptionally high value, but yes, things can break sometimes, no matter how careful you are.

Quite a lot of artists’ work is made by a drive and passion for the production of the art object, rather than necessarily considering its structure and durability - this means things can be badly made, barely held together etc

There can be trends for things like ceramic sculptures to be so thin and fragile they look like they’d snap if you touched them… well… sometimes they do - and I have to touch them, and fix them down and make them safe.

I’ve been lucky with the few things I have broken or damaged, as it’s always been fixable or replaceable, and so far, early career artists’ work only.

As mentioned, a ceramic sculpture from a set, known to be incredibly fragile, and expecting a few to be broken during the installation process - a part snapped off during handling - it was superglued back on by the artist, who was present. I also chipped a sort of slot-together laser cut wooden sculpture on a very fragile edge piece - in this case, they got a replacement piece cut and covered the cost - I did offer to pay/contribute or run it through my insurance, but it was considered low enough cost to just be redone. The artists and galleries involved still choose to work with me by preference, so I think I was forgiven.

I also cracked a monitor screen once - though I was acting under instruction of the person who owned it, against my advice. In that case, I paid half towards the replacement, basically by undercharging for half a day.

I know people who’ve broken much worse in their careers, but still nothing catastrophic. Also, I’ve maybe installed 200 - 300 exhibitions, and somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 artworks. I think I’ve noticably damaged less than 5, so I think my ratio is still good.

I imagine I’ve contributed to subtly damaging a lot more than that, just from tiny knocks and bumps which add up over time - or simply the act of moving the work at all causes a tiny amount of damage - imagine each time you put a screw back in the same hole, you lose a little bit of material, for example.

I have insurance for this work, but generally things are covered by the venue’s insurance, and anything of very high value is watched obsessively every step of the way, and all possible risks removed - even if it’s going to take all day to put up one work.

If anything does get damaged, the general run of things is identifying how it happened and who was involved - more about avoiding similar happening again than blaming anyone - though they do have to work out which organisation was in charge at the time - for example, once an art mover drops the work off, paperwork is signed to say “not our problem any more”. Same in reverse once it’s loaded onto a van.

I don’t know of any major incidents when I’ve been working, but generally things are covered by insurance and people are forgiven, as long as they weren’t obviously being careless and were following best practice - you could find yourself not being asked back again though - most people doing similar work are self-employed freelancers, so they can just use someone else in future.

One thing to note is that if you were to damage a £20 million painting or something, unless the whole thing is exploded or set on fire or eaten, you’re not looking at £20 million of damage. The cost is actually the cost of the conservator or technicians who will repair the work - so breaking the frame corner or something, might only be a half-day’s work for repairs - so although the work is £20 million, you’d only have caused £200 - £500 of damage, for example.

For individual works, traditional or classical works tend to be to some degree straightforward - if it’s a painting, it’s one painting, if it’s a sculpture, it’s one sculpture. It might be a massive, heavy painting with a fragile frame etc, so it may take a while, but all in all you’re not likely to be spending more than an hour on it. Huge sculptures can of course take quite a lot of time to move other things out the way, and making room for whatever machinery/lifting equipment is going to be used.

Now, if we look at contemporary works, you get things like one piece of work is “200 photographs, individually pinned up, in a neat grid of 10 x 20 photographs, perfectly aligned, with a 3cm gap between each photograph”. You get artworks by people like Cornelia Parker, which may involve a lot of individual pieces, which need individually hanging at an exact height in a specific place. I had one where for one piece of work, I had to hang approx 300 plaster cast sculptures on a wall, according to a very specific layout. These sort of things can literally take all week sometimes.

Glass:
Yeah, this is a common problem with any glazed works - and perspex is even more reflective than standard glass.

You can sometimes minimise the problem with careful lighting (ideally from high enough up to not be seen in a reflection), but generally it’s an issue everywhere.

There is a more expensive mostly non-reflective “art glass”, which is UV resistant and under most gallery lighting should let you pretty much look straight on at a work with no reflection. It tends to cost about 4x as much as normal glass. It does have a barely detectable green or purple tint, but compared to reflecting, it looks much better. It’s expensive, but it’s pretty amazing the effect it has - you can see a reflection from a sharp angle, but straight on it looks unglazed. If I can dig out some appropriate photos later, I’ll edit them in.

Replicas:
I’ve never knowingly seen that happen, but I’ve very rarely worked outside the UK, so it could be common practice elsewhere. Given the amount of security prep around some of the more famous historical works I’ve installed, I’m relatively confident they’re the real ones.

One exception is for when a popular work is loaned elsewhere - they often put a print/replica or something on its place - though this would be clearly labelled.

Fastener/Driver: I like a Torx head when available - but most commonly we use PZ2 screws, generally 3.5mm x 30mm. I tend to use a Makita 484 for light work, or a 486 for heavy work. Some works are “no power tools” (micro-vibrations can damage the work), so they go in with a Wera ratchet screwdriver. Fixed to the work, I prefer Springlock fixings.

Historic buildings - This varies - normally if a place is regularly showing work, this has been sorted in advance (often years ago), but there are cases where we would have to build false stud walls in front of the existing walls - sometimes you’re allowed to put a few holes in the original walls to hold the false walls up. You generally need a plan/diagram and long conversation first. Sometimes you need to invent fixing methods - I remember making some metal clamps with a sort of inert foam inner collar to clamp gently round some pillars which were on a “do not damage these at all” list. ** Mounting/fastening:** These are mostly down to style, weight and security (and cost). Sometimes the venue has a house style, or the artwork owner/lender can specify fittings, sometimes the curator has a preference, sometimes they ask me for recommendations.

A few common fitting types

Top left is part of a Ryman Link Hanger, used for heavy artworks. you put one on the wall, and one on the artwork, then a sort of T-bone shaped bit twists between the two. Generally used on very heavy things which need to be lifted with pneumatic machinery.

Right hand side are two sizes of mirror plates, which are pretty standard and very secure - for expensive works they’re often used with security screws. The downside is that they’re visible, and sometimes they’re thought of like “ears sticking out”.

On the left going downwards are a small Ryman hanger, a Springlock, a large Ryman hanger and a strap hanger. The ryman/springlocks are all invisible fixings - they go on the back of the work, and mount onto a screw you’ve already put in the wall, then a security plate slides in, to lock the screw into place. You generally need a special removal tool to take them off. They’re popular with curators because they’re not visible, they’re relatively secure and they can be very quick to install. The strap hanger isn’t used often, but can be attached to a hook, screw or a sort of security bracket.

In a domestic install (a house) it’s far more common to use cord and a picture hanging hook or nail in most cases - though they can be easily knocked or stolen. If you’re installing works in a corridor or staircase, or long term I’d probably lean towards mirror plates (if you can cope with the “ears”), or Springlocks (if you can get them in your country). You can paint out the mirror plates the same colour as the wall. Mirror plates are screwed in from the front (two screws into the work, one into the wall on each side), Springlocks are placed over a screw which is already on the wall.

Mirror plate £0.30 a pair
Springlock £2.00 a pair
Ryman Hanger £10.00 a pair

Installation: You can definitely tell a bad install. In theory, if I do my job well, you don’t think about the fact that I must exist.

One main rule of thumb is “centre lines” - generally works in galleries are hung centre-aligned at somewhere from 135cm to 150cm from the floor. 150 used to be the most common hanging height, but things have drifted downwards in recent years, as a nod towards wheelchair accessibility etc. 135cm is considered very accessible, 150 is considered to often look best. 140 and 145 are compromises - and most things are hung at this height these days.

For spacing, generally the works are equally spaced on a wall (e.g. the gaps between works are the same), with an extra 10% - 20% gap added on the ends, especially in corners. Corners visually “pull the work into the corner” making the gap look smaller.

There’s a lot of difference in taste and style regarding labels - whether they go next to each work individually, or whether they’re put to one side, to not ruin the view of the work itself.

Curatorially, exhibitions are normally ordered and grouped carefully - now that depends on the content, for example, sometimes a specific work will only fit in one place - but otherwise, things tend to be deliberately placed. For example, a collection of works can be grouped in a narrative or chronology to be read clockwise around the room, or works of similar colour or theme would be grouped together. It’s considered what is “within the same view”, or what sits opposite, next to etc, what the lighting requirements of different works are.

This varies massively for different spaces/exhibitions. Some places will pretty much leave a pile of wrapped works in the gallery, let me in and say “you know what you’re doing” and leave me to it - but more commonly, the venue curator will be making those decisions. Often they’ll consult us about it. Sometimes they casually lay the works out round the room, and leave it to us to “rationalise the spacing”.

When it’s a touring/temporary exhibition, there’s sometimes an assigned curator for the project - now sometimes it’s still the venue’s curator, sometimes it’s the collection representative/artist and sometimes it’s a separate 3rd party curator.

Sometimes it’s more than one at the same time, and we have to mediate as they constantly disagree with each other.

It’s not unheard of for one to be in Monday, make some decisions, and you hang half of the works, then on Tuesday, the other one comes in, makes you take half of it down and put it on another wall, then Wednesday, the first one is back in, and… etc etc.

Sometimes, the artist/representative etc, wants to have a say, but they don’t really know what they’re doing. This is mostly a problem with working with representatives from commercial galleries. In these cases, there’s careful attempts to appease them, whilst still trying to persuade them to let you do things properly.

Thankfully, I’m fairly good at diffusing that sort of situation, and getting the decisions made and getting the show finished and up in time - which is probably why I get asked back again!

I’m not consistent with this - my personal taste leans towards geometric abstract works, so I’m a massive fan of Bridget Riley, for instance. However, when you look at this stuff all day, there’s probably artworks in every genre I’m incredibly fond of - I really like Atkinson Grimshaw’s dock paintings, for example, and sometimes there’s 400 year old religious paintings that are just incredible as objects in their own right.

There’s nothing super-gross that I’ve installed that I can think of immediately (I’ll edit later if something spring to mind) - but there’s certainly been quite a lot of things which were sexually bizarre - I remember a video work once by a French artist who’s name I can’t remember, which initially looked like dancing/moving abstract geometric patterns, but through the duration of the video, accompanied by the song “It’s raining men”, sort of zoomed out to reveal all the shapes were made from line drawings of urinating or ejaculating penises.

• edited bit - if we include things I saw, but didn’t specifically install, there’s a lot of very weird “performance art”, which is often a bit like an avant-garde solo theatre performance sort of thing. Some performance artists can lean heavily into nudity, cutting themselves and bleeding, sexual acts, weird costumes, fetish stuff etc. As technicians, we might help prepare the space, but the performers obviously install themselves. Sometimes we operate lights or sound equipment. Anyway, with that in mind, I might be slightly misremembering the specifics, but at a performance art event, I once saw a woman wearing a rabbit’s head mask, sat on the floor with her trousers and knickers pulled down, masturbating to a black and white video projection of some sort of nazi propaganda film, whilst a bloke dressed in a military uniform crawled across a floor covered in broken glass, and possibly tomatoes (for art reasons). At the time I literally had no idea what was going on. Many years later, I still have no idea what was going on.

Stress:
I used to smoke, and once they invented vaping, I did that for a while. I don’t do either now, but outside of work I have to make sure I get enough sleep, and sometimes have to do yoga to de-stress, both mentally and physically. Moving heavy crates around, or running up and down stairs etc, or going up and down a ladder 500 times, or crawling round on your knees for hours can take quite a toll on the body, and in recent years I’ve really started to feel it. I’m quite into doing stretches in the morning these days.

On a more difficult install, you’re often working with a team of other technicians, so there’s a sense of camaraderie with the other people in the same situation. You work very closely and intensely with a small group of people - and thankfully, I’ve generally found them all good to work with. That atmosphere generally helps with the stress of things. I’m apparently good at keeping things calm, and tutoring and reassuring less experienced techs - so all in all, we look out for each other and try and share the stress out.

Passions to Commodities:
Same as with music, I guess. It’s often inevitable at some point in an artist’s career - especially if they’re “represented by a commercial gallery”. There’s a point where you’d be creating “what will sell” or “what will get the commission” rather than “what your passion leads you to”. I’ve managed to avoid this as an artist by simply avoiding being successful :)

There’s a case where I feel some people are “just churning another one out for the cash”, but there’s still the majority working with genuine passion - and surprisingly a lack of ego in most cases. Even amongst “contemporary artists you may have heard of”, the handful I’ve met seem to have generally been anxious, low self-confidence, kind, passionate about their projects etc. Same with musicians actually. It seems like it’s normally the commercial gallery representative or management that carries the ego around.

Very few, if any. I’m generally working in publicly funded galleries, and the vast majority of the works have long and clear paper trails, insurance and permission before they go on display - they’re normally either owned by the “permanent collection”, or borrowed with a “loan agreement” from another gallery, collector or artist.

If you want stolen artworks, you need to look at auction houses, commercial galleries and wealthy people’s houses :)

If there’s a good reason to do so, go for it. I did a handful like this a few years ago - we fitted a few hidden fittings at the top edge, behind the work, so it was actually safe and secure, but it looked like it was “just leant there”.

You get a lot of deliveries on lorries (trucks) with a tail lift which is the wrong size for the loading bay of the gallery… so out they go, round the front, drop the work off on the floor in the middle of the city centre, leaving you to load it onto a little set of trolley wheels and drag it through the city centre and through the front door :)

There’s also works which are to be installed upstairs, but are too big to fit in the lift (elevator). Sometimes the only option is to manhandle something up the staircase with ten people lifting it. We’ve also had “it will fit in the lift, if we take it out of its crate and hold it diagonally”.

There’s a huge amount of scale, weight and practical things like “can we hang this [heavy thing] from the [not strong enough]?”

A favourite I remember was:

“Is there any way we can screw the paintings to the window?”

“I’m assuming you mean the frame?”

“No, are there screws that will go into the glass?”