Condition Report

What’s in the document

• The work printed with its image, title, artist, year, medium and dimensions
• Report type: pre-shipment, post-shipment, loan outgoing, loan return
• Overall condition grade: excellent, good, fair, poor
• Ten-point assessment covering surface, support, frame, hardware and damage categories
• Examiner notes panel for written findings
• Signature lines for the examining registrar and a gallery countersignature
• One block per work when several are examined together

Why the pair matters more than the report

A single condition report is an opinion about how a work looked on one day. A pair — one made before the crate closed, one made when it opened — is evidence of change. Insurers settle on the difference between the two, and the absence of the first is the most common reason a transit claim stalls: with no documented baseline, nothing distinguishes damage caused in transit from damage that was already there.

The same logic governs loans. A registrar releasing a work to an institution and receiving it back three months later has two moments at which the work is in front of them and available to be recorded, and no other moments at all. Museum loan agreements — including the loan agreement generated here — require a condition report signed by both parties on despatch and again on return for exactly this reason.

The ten points, and what each one is looking at

The assessment grid is fixed at ten lines. They are the categories a conservator would work through on a painting, in roughly the order the eye moves.

Paint surface, cracking or flaking, discoloration

The three lines covering the paint layer itself — its integrity, whether it is lifting or losing adhesion, and whether the colour or varnish has shifted. Craquelure that is stable is not damage; craquelure that is cupping is.

Canvas or support, stretcher bars

The structure carrying the image. Slackness, planar distortion, corner draws, keying and any repair to the stretcher belong here — a support problem becomes a paint problem if it is left.

Frame, mounting hardware, glazing or varnish

The parts most often damaged in handling and most often overlooked in reporting, because they are not "the art". A chipped frame corner and a bent D-ring are both claimable and both cost money to put right.

Scratches or abrasions, water damage

The two categories that most often appear between a despatch report and a return report, and the two that a photograph taken at the time is worth more than a paragraph about.

How to use the printed form honestly

The form prints with Excellent indicated on each of the ten lines and on the overall grade. That is a starting state, not a finding. The examining registrar is expected to mark down any line that differs and to write the detail into the examiner notes panel — and a report that comes back with every line untouched should be treated as a report nobody actually made.

Two habits make the difference between a report that settles a claim and one that invites an argument. Write in the notes panel in specifics — where on the work, how large, what it looks like — rather than in adjectives. And photograph what you describe, separately, at the time, keyed to the note. The form does not print photo zones; the photographs live alongside it in your file, named against the document number in the footer.

What it does not do

It does not assess anything. Every mark on the page is made by a person, and the platform has no view on the state of your work. It does not print photo-mounting zones, and it does not attach or store images beyond the artwork photograph on the record. It does not compare two reports for you or flag differences between a despatch and a return. And it is not a conservator’s examination: the ten points are a registrar’s handling check, and where they raise a question, the answer comes from a conservator and belongs in a conservation report.

Questions, answered

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