Cataloguing & Documentation
01- Bespoke, confidential inventory systems and databases
- Condition reports
- Professional photography
- Archival services
- Catalogue publication
Collection Management / Installation / Curation
Discreet, trusted care for private collections.
We handle the unseen work: safekeeping, documentation, maintenance, presentation, succession.
Who we are
We bring the same standard of care to a private collection that institutions and galleries bring to their own holdings.
In Private Hands is a specialized collection management firm serving individuals, families and businesses holding significant art, luxury objects, and fine collectibles.
Alongside collection management, installation and curatorial guidance are offered both as part of an ongoing retainer and on a standalone, project basis.
We work across the collecting world — from private and corporate collections to art advisors, artist studios, and estates.
We are not a gallery, an auction house, or a marketplace. We do not buy, sell, or promote objects. We work with what you already own and meet the collection where it is.
The problem we solve
Significant collections are acquired with passion, patience and expertise but are rarely managed or shown with the same rigor.
Undocumented
Provenance goes unrecorded and insurance values lapse out of date.
Unseen
Without a curatorial eye, works sit in storage or hang without thought.
Unprepared
No one beyond the owner knows what exists, where it lives, or what happens next.
The risk is not only financial: it is 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
What we handle and coordinate, on retainer or by the project.
Care & Preservation
02- Packing and shipping
- Framing
- Climate-appropriate storage
- Conservation
Insurance & Valuation
03- Ongoing coordination with appraisers and insurers
- Coverage reviewed on a regular schedule so it always reflects current value
- Oversight of all museum and exhibition loans
Estate & Legacy Planning
04- Long-term planning for succession, donation, or sale
- Coordination with estate counsel and family advisors
Installation
05- Planning and oversight of hanging, siting and display across homes, offices and private galleries
- Placement, lighting and safety treated with museum-standard care
Curatorial Services
06- Understanding a collection's internal logic
- Arrangement, rotation and presentation
Art Libraries
07- Creation of educational files per work: provenance, exhibition history, correspondence with artist, estate or gallery, catalogues, monographs and all related documentation
- Assemblage of a working reference and research library
Approach
A collection carries memory, identity, and legacy.
What a collection means
A work of art carries meaning well beyond its cultural and market value: a collection is also memory, identity and legacy. That understanding shapes how we work with a collection and with the family itself.
Discretion first
Every engagement and project is confidential. 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.
A trained eye, not just a ledger
How a collection is hung, sited and organized within a private space shapes how it is experienced. A trained eye comes from years of building collections and exhibitions.
The trusted advisor model
We often work the way a family's attorney, private banker or 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.
One point of contact
A single, experienced advisor knows the collection's full history and oversees every specialist: installers, conservators, appraisers, insurers, shippers, and estate counsel.
Project-based engagements
Not every collection requires a long-term relationship. Whether placing a new acquisition, rehanging one room or an entire home, a single project is also where the relationship often begins.
Founder
Twenty years across private collection management, gallery and museum leadership, and curatorial practice.
In Private Hands is built by Jamie Manné, a Los Angeles-based arts professional whose twenty-year career has spanned private collection management, gallery and museum leadership, curatorial projects, exhibition organization, publications and community-facing programming.
She began in 2006 at Jim Kempner Fine Art before several years at Paula Cooper Gallery as artist liaison and assistant to both the Director and Paula herself. After returning to Los Angeles in 2010, a brief period at Margo Leavin Gallery preceded nearly a decade as Collection Manager and Advisor to a family named among ArtNews' Top 200 Collectors from 2012 through 2019.
Read full biographyClose biography
In 2017 she launched and was named Director of the Marciano Art Foundation, overseeing the restoration and transformation of a 100,000-square-foot former Masonic Temple into a public-facing contemporary art space and organizing large-scale installations, rotating exhibitions, site-specific projects, catalogue publications and educational programs.
Following her resignation in early 2019, she advised newly appointed Director Klaus Biesenbach at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles for several months during his transition into the role, contributing to a number of special projects alongside her advisory work.
From late 2019 through 2021 she was Co-Director at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, bringing her institutional and private-collection background into a commercial setting, managing the gallery's roster while expanding community outreach and programming. She has since consulted for and advised private and public collections, institutions, artists, brands, media outlets and nonprofits.
Credentials at a glance
Education
The American School in London
Harvard-Westlake, Los Angeles
The George Washington University, Washington, DC: B.A. in Psychology, Art History & Studio Art, 2005; M.A. in Art Therapy, 2006
Gallery experience
Co-Director, Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles
Artist Liaison, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles
Artist Liaison and Assistant to the Director & Owner, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Gallery Manager, Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York
Private collection stewardship
Has advised numerous private collections, including nearly a decade managing one collection named to the ArtNews Top 200 (2012–2019).
Institutional leadership
Director, Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles
Consultant / Advisor, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Visiting Curator, Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
Publications
Unpacking: The Marciano Collection, Marciano Art Foundation (2017)
Jim Shaw: The Wig Museum, Marciano Art Foundation (2017)
Olafur Eliasson: Reality Projector, Marciano Art Foundation (2018)
Ai Weiwei: Life Cycle, Marciano Art Foundation (2019)
Direct artist experience
Rudolf Stingel, Christian Marclay, The Sol LeWitt Estate, Hans Haacke, Carl Andre, Robert Grosvenor, Sherrie Levine, Mark di Suvero, Sam Durant, David Novros, Sophie Calle, Carey Young, Kelley Walker, Meg Webster, Carol Bove, John Baldessari, William Leavitt, Jim Shaw, Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, The Yayoi Kusama Foundation, Glenn Ligon, Bunny Rogers, Karen O, Sigur Rós, David Lynch, Hank Willis Thomas, The Mary Obering Estate, Tomer Peretz
Advisory, consulting & speaking engagements
Hammer Museum, Frieze Art Fair, Artsy, CULTURED, Harper's Bazaar, GUESS?, Matches Fashion, Second Home, Rx Art, Genesis STEAM, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation, Beatrice Woods Center for the Arts, Venice Family Clinic, Stuart House, UNICEF, Sexy Beast for Planned Parenthood, Inner-City Arts, Free Arts for Abused Children, Children's Institute
Inquiries
Every conversation is confidential, including the first one.
An initial conversation carries no obligation, whether it concerns an ongoing engagement or a single room that needs hanging. Tell us what you have and what you would like handled, and we will tell you whether we are the right fit.
Telephone
(202) 997-2601Based in
Los Angeles, California. Available to travel.