Collection Management / Installation / Curation
We handle the unseen work: safekeeping, documentation, maintenance, presentation, succession.
Who we are
In Private Hands is a specialized collection management firm serving individuals, families and businesses holding significant art, luxury objects, and fine collectibles. We provide the same level of care, maintenance, documentation, and continuity that institutions and galleries apply to their holdings and handle collections the way a trusted family advisor would: personally, discreetly and for the long term.
Along with collection management, installation and curatorial guidance are offered both as part of an ongoing retainer and on a standalone, project basis.
Our clients include private and corporate collections, art advisors, artist studios and estates.
We are not a gallery, an auction house, or a marketplace, and we do not buy, sell, or promote. We work with what you already own and meet the collection where it is.
The problem we solve
Provenance often goes undocumented, insurance values lapse out of date, and works sit in storage or hang without thought because the family never had access to the kind of curatorial eye or registrar's discipline a museum or gallery builds into its own practice. No one outside the family knows what exists, where it lives, or what happens to it next.
The risk is not only financial, but a progressive erosion of a legacy that took a lifetime to build, and a collection never fully lived with. In Private Hands exists to close that gap, without ever exposing the collection to the wider market.
Core services
Without proper documentation, a collection can't be fully known — not by insurers, not by appraisers, not even by the family that owns it. We meticulously maintain bespoke, confidential inventory systems and databases, condition reports, professional photography, archival services, and catalog publication.
The difference between a collection that endures and one that doesn't usually comes down to care taken long before any crisis. We handle coordination of conservation, framing, and climate-appropriate storage, working exclusively with our network of vetted specialists bound by the same confidentiality standards.
Insurance is only as good as the information behind it: a policy written against an outdated valuation protects far less than a collector assumes. In Private Hands engages in ongoing coordination with appraisers and insurers so coverage always reflects current value and is reviewed on a regular schedule.
A well-documented collection transfers cleanly. An undocumented one leaves the next generation to reconstruct decades of decisions from scratch. Our services include long-horizon planning for succession, donation, or sale, developed alongside the family's own attorneys and advisors.
Improper installation is one of the most common causes of damage to fine art. We plan and oversee hanging, siting, and display across homes, offices, and private galleries, treating placement, lighting, and safety with the same care given to museum and gallery installations.
At the core of our practice is helping a collection find its internal logic: how it's arranged, rotated, and presented, whether in a single room or an entire home.
Museums and galleries keep object files: provenance, exhibition history, condition reports, correspondence with the artist or estate. Most private collections have none of this. We compile that educational file: assembling catalogs, monographs, and documentation into a working reference library organized around the collection, so the research already exists when a piece needs to be sold, loaned, insured, or understood.
Approach
Works of art and the creative process behind them carry significant meaning well beyond their cultural and market values. For a family, a collection is also memory, identity, and legacy. This understanding shapes how we work with a collection and with the family itself.
Every engagement is confidential, which means we do not publicize client relationships, name collections in our marketing, engage in social media, or introduce a collector to anyone they have not asked to meet.
How a collection is hung, sited, and organized within a private space shapes how it is experienced and understood. That eye comes from years of building collections and exhibitions, not from an interior designer hired for the occasion.
We often work the way a family's attorney, private banker, or personal physician works: on long-term retainer, present across generations rather than for a single transaction. Continuity of the collection and the relationship is the whole model.
A single, experienced advisor holds the history of the collection and oversees every specialist, from installers and conservators to appraisers, insurers, shippers, and estate counsel, so the collector never has to manage a roster of vendors.
Not every collector is ready for a long-term relationship, and not every collection requires one. For collectors with smaller holdings, a single project is also where the relationship begins. Whether it is placing a new acquisition, rehanging one room or an entire home, we offer project-based guidance rather than ongoing engagement.
Founder
In Private Hands is built by Jamie Manné, a Los Angeles-based arts professional, whose twenty-year career in the art world has spanned gallery and museum leadership, private collection management, curatorial projects, exhibition organization, publications, and community-facing programming.
Manné started her career in New York at Jim Kempner Fine Art before spending several years at Paula Cooper Gallery, one of the field's most respected programs, working as an artist liaison and assistant to both the Director and Paula herself.
After returning home to Los Angeles in 2010, a brief period at Margo Leavin Gallery preceded a formative shift within the industry: nearly a decade as Collection Manager and Advisor for a high-net-worth family whose collectors were named among ArtNews' Top 200 Collectors from 2012 through 2019.
In 2017, she was named Founding Director of the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, where she oversaw a 100,000+ square foot space and organized numerous large-scale installations, rotating exhibitions, site-specific projects and public programming.
Following her resignation in early 2019, she served as an advisor to newly appointed Director Klaus Biesenbach at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles during his transition into the role.
From late 2019 through 2021, Manné served as Co-Director at the Los Angeles gallery Kayne Griffin Corcoran, bringing her institutional and private-collection background into a commercial setting, managing and supporting the gallery's roster, while expanding community outreach and public programming.
She has since consulted for, advised, and contributed to a range of private and public collections, institutions, artists, brands, media outlets, and nonprofits.
Inquiries
An initial conversation carries no obligation, whether it concerns an ongoing engagement or a single room that needs hanging. Tell us what you have, where it lives, and what you would like handled, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.