Cataloguing & Documentation
01- Bespoke, confidential inventory systems and databases
- Condition reports
- Professional photography
- Archival services
- Catalogue publication
Art Collection Management | Installation & Curatorial Services
Discreet, trusted care for private collections.
We handle the unseen work: safekeeping, documentation, preservation, presentation, succession.
Who we are
Applying the same standard of care to private collections that institutions and galleries apply 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.
Installation and curatorial guidance are offered both as part of an ongoing retainer and on a standalone, project basis.
Our clients come from across the collecting world, ranging 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 rarely managed or shown with the same rigor.
Undocumented
Provenance goes unrecorded, key artwork details go missing, and insurance values lapse out of date.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.
Services
What we handle and coordinate, on retainer or by the project.
Care & Preservation
02- Packing and shipping
- Framing
- Climate-appropriate storage
- Conservation
- Emergency and disaster preparedness
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 both the collection and the family.
Discretion first
Every engagement and project is confidential. We do not publicize client relationships, name collections in our marketing, or introduce a collector to anyone they have not asked to meet.
A trained eye, not just a ledger
How a collection is hung, placed and organized within a private space shapes how it is experienced. A trained eye comes from years of building collections and exhibitions.
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.
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. We approach every collection with continuity of stewardship in mind.
Project-based engagements
We understand that 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 begins.
“We are all caretakers, not owners.
— Anonymous Museum Registrar
The art will outlive us all; our job is simply to keep the story organized and safe.”
Founder
Expertise and fluency earned over twenty years across every corner of the art world.
Established in 2026, In Private Hands is built by Jamie G. Manné, a Los Angeles–based arts professional whose twenty-year career has spanned private collection management and advisory, gallery and museum leadership, curatorial projects, exhibition organization, publications, and community-facing programming. She also holds an M.A. in Art Therapy from The George Washington University.
She began at Jim Kempner Fine Art in New York before several years at Paula Cooper Gallery as an 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 during his transition into the role, contributing to a number of special projects alongside her advisory work. From late 2019 through 2021, Manné was Co-Director at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, bringing her institutional and private-collection background into a commercial setting, managing multiple artists on the gallery's roster while expanding community outreach and programming.
Her advisory practice has since extended to private collectors, cultural institutions, artists, and nonprofit organizations.
Contact
Every conversation is confidential, including the first one.
An initial conversation carries no obligation, whether it concerns ongoing engagement or a single project. 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