Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1532915
C O U R T E S Y O F A L E VO N hough the exact numbers are shrouded in secrecy, something like 90 percent of the world's great museum pieces are vaulted away in storage. Art collectors globally tend to echo this instinct, stashing away a significant portion of their collections. Sometimes there's simply no room to display the painting or sculpture—other times the thinking goes that if a piece of art is likely to appreciate in value, why risk damaging or overexposing it? "What we have is billions of dollars' worth of art that winds up in storage for no one to see; there's something sad about that to me," says Daniel Novela, a Miami-based longtime corporate and art attorney. There's also untapped potential. In real estate, for example, a person can buy property and rent it out to make money before ultimately selling it. "With art, you can't do that," says Novela. "Between the time the art is purchased up until the art is sold, there's no monetization aspect." There's no incentive to let the Picassos see the light of day, no return for owners who take their Basquiats out of storage. If innovation is what happens when a person finds that sliver of blank Alevon, an art rental marketplace for works valued at more than $100,000, offers members a new way to appreciate masterpieces. BY BROOKE MAZUREK going, going… rented! T white space that no one else has yet noticed, Alevon, an art rental marketplace for works valued at more than $100,000, is Novela's bold brushstroke on the current canvas of the art world ecosystem. Through the membership-based platform, art owners can list high-value works for background-checked renters to consider. There's no cost to list, and the art will stay with its owner until the day it's rented, at which point it will be evaluated and insured. "It's like Turo, but for collectible art," says Novela. For interior designers, the framework lends itself to seasonal art rotations for their clients' homes—Fernando Botero for spring, Takashi Murakami for summer, Robert Longo for fall. Monthly fees range from $600 for the colorfully immersive works of Carlos Cruz-Diez to $12,000 for Alex Katz's flat, stylized paintings (his current auction record is $4 million). "Whether it's because of social media or other [cultural] factors, there is a whole generation of people who value experiences more than ownership," says Novela. And experiencing art, as he sees it, amplifies who we are as people. "There are studies that show that being in the presence of art increases other forms of creativity. People should be able to appreciate it, and we're trying to change that." A piece by Carlos Cruz-Diez, one of the artists represented in the Alevon collection. BALHAR B O U RSH O P S .CO M