Fine Art | Legal & Operational Integration
A contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles had been operating for six years with a program that grew in influence to attract the attention of a European acquisitions firm that had been tracking their roster for over a year. When the European firm moved forward with a formal acquisition agreement covering six works from a represented artist, it was exactly the kind of institutional validation the gallery had been building toward.
Then the due diligence request arrived. The paperwork told a different story.
The acquisitions firm's legal team requested standard documentation - artist representation agreements, consignment records, and a clear title on the works in question. The gallery had an LLC, a real program, and six years of relationships.
What they didn't have was paperwork that could withstand outside scrutiny.
The artist agreements were a mix of informal emails and terms that had never been formally executed. Consignment records were inconsistent across represented artists, tracked differently depending on when the relationship started. Two of the six works had title chain gaps stemming from prior private sales that predated the gallery's involvement. Transactions that had been handled informally and never properly documented. The European firm gave them three weeks to resolve it or walk away from the deal.
B2B Pro was brought in on day two. We ran a rapid audit and triaged immediately around what the acquisition required. The artist representation agreement was redrafted and executed with terms that reflected the actual commercial relationship. Consignment records were reconstructed and standardized across all represented artists using existing correspondence, invoices, and transaction history. The title chain on the two flagged works was cleared through supporting documentation traceable back to the original private sales. We also surfaced three additional gaps outside the scope of the deal, undefined revenue split terms with two other artists, and no formal purchase agreement template for collector transactions, and resolved those in the same window.
The deal closed within the expected window, and the acquisitions firm proceeded without further objection. The gallery's legal infrastructure was established to hold up the next time someone looks closely.
► DAYS TO CLOSE FROM ENGAGEMENT → 18
► DOCUMENTS PREPARED FOR DUE DILIGENCE → 11
► ADDITIONAL LIABILITY GAPS RESOLVED → 3
► DEAL VALUE PRESERVED → 6-WORK ACQUISITION AGREEMENT
► DELIVERABLES → ARTIST AGREEMENTS, CONSIGNMENT RESTRUCTURE, TITLE CLEARANCE, CONTRACT SUITE