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Irma, Art, & Hurricane Preparedness in “South Florida’s Gold Coast”

Miami and Miami Beach are home to many significant collections of art.

Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest contemporary art event in North America showing about $3 billion in works, has been situated in Miami Beach since 2002.

Some of the works of art are housed in residences maintained in any of the more than 400 luxury condo towers that have been developed since 2011. Some are kept in single family homes. Of course, works of art are also to be found housed in museums, both public and private, and in cultural centers.

Marion Maneker of Art Market Monitor, writing from the 2017 Global Auction House Summit presented by Invaluable, reports:

“At the Invaluable Auction House Summit in Boston, Thomas Burns from Fortress Fine Art Storage and Simon Hornby of Crozier both addressed the problems with hurricane preparedness in South Florida’s Gold Coast.

“Burns says his teams have been working all week to move their clients art into Fortress’s facility and prepare the building for an unprecedented blow. “Starting Tuesday we were inundated with clients who were completely unprepared,” Burns said. It turns out major works are in place without insurance and the insurance companies have placed a moratorium on new insurance in the area this week.

“Fortress has a program that allows collectors to put their works in storage in June when they leave the area. The big question is how many have had their works moved back to the beach houses so early in the season.

“Hornby pointed to the fact that art insurance carriers were slow to engage these kind of hurricane preparedness programs waiting until this Tuesday to call for logistical support. By then, it was already too late to add capacity amid the jammed traffic and fuel shortages caused by the massive evacuation taking place.”

Meanwhile, workers at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach have been working to fortify the bullet-proof glass that protects Damien Hirst’s life-size, gilded with 24-karat gold sculpture of the skeleton of a mammoth. Entitled “Gone But Not Forgotten” (2014), the sculpture was acquired at auction in 2014 for $15 million by Ukrainian-American Len Blavatnik. “Gone But Not Forgotten” was then installed in the garden of the Faena Hotel Miami Beach ahead of the opening of Faena Forum in 2016. Mr. Blavatnik is owner of Warner Music Group and a partner, with Argentine entrepreneur and developer Alan Faena, in the Faena Forum.

Mr. Hirst explains the sculpture of the mammoth as “an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful.”

“The mammoth comes from a time and place that we cannot ever fully understand. Despite its scientific reality, it has attained an almost mythical status and I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank. It’s such an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful, it is gone but not forgotten.”

See:

“A Miami Transformed by Wealth Braces for the Storm” | Michael Smith and Katya Kazakina, Bloomberg, 8 September 2017

“Irma Threatens Art Spread Throughout South Florida Homes” | Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 8 September 2017

“Culture’s a carnival for opening of dazzling Faena Forum” | Andres Viglucci, Miami Herald, 25 November 2016

“Hirst’s golden mammoth on display at Faena Hotel Miami Beach” | Damien Hirst.com, 8 December 2015

“Len Blavatnik buys Damien Hirst work for $15M at amfAR gala” | Emily Smith, Page Six, 23 May 2014

#Miami #MiamiBeach #Irma #HurricaneIrma #preparations #insurance #art #artmarket #artstorage #FortressFineArtStorage #Crozier #ArtBaselMiamiBeach #Faena #FaenaForum #AlanFaena #LenBlavatnik #DamienHirst #GoneButNotForgotten

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San Diego・Smart Gigabit Community

US Ignite has selected Cleantech San Diego and CyberTECH as the key innovation partners for the City of San Diego as a Smart Gigabit Community.

“US Ignite’s Smart Gigabit Communities (SGC) program enhances local community innovation ecosystems by enabling communities to accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation, gigabit applications and services that run on advanced networks.”

San Diego will join 20 other cities nationwide who are participating in the Smart Gigabit Community program. Cleantech San Diego and CyberTECH will collaborate with US Ignite in the development of six gigabit applications.

CleanTech San Diego is a member-based, non-profit trade organization working to position the greater San Diego region, including Imperial County, as a global leader in the cleantech economy.

“As a nonprofit organization, Cleantech San Diego is uniquely suited to support the industry by fostering collaborations across the private-public-academic landscape, leading advocacy efforts to promote cleantech priorities, and encouraging investment in the San Diego region.”

The CleanTech San Diego office is located on India Street in downtown San Diego.

CyberTECH also has its office in downtown San Diego, on First Avenue. Amongst many other activities, CyberTECH is leveraging experience and expertise in the Internet of Things (IoT) to develop the Smart & Safe Cities Institute.

US Ignite is a nonprofit organization working to

“accelerate new wired and wireless networking advances from research to prototype to full-scale smart community and interconnected national deployments. US Ignite’s Smart Gigabit Communities program accelerates the adoption of ultra-fast, programmable fiber and wireless networks as the bedrock of smart communities by identifying new economic and social opportunities created by those networks.”

Cox Communications has played a key role in bringing the Smart Gigabit Communities program to San Diego through a $300,000 grant to US Ignite over three years.

See:

“US Ignite Selects Cleantech San Diego and CyberTECH as Key Innovation Partners for San Diego’s Smart Gigabit Community Program” | N. Mohan, US Ignite, 7 September 2017

“What is US Ignite”

“Cleantech San Diego”

“CyberTECH”

#SanDiego #cleantech #cybertech #realestate #resilience #smartluxury #USIgnite #SmartGigabitCommunity #CleantechSanDiego #CyberTECH

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Miami museums prepare as Hurricane Irma approaches

What a month.

Museums in Miami and Miami Beach are taking precautionary measures ahead of the possible landfall of Hurricane Irma.

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), The Wolfsonian—Florida International University (Wolfsonian-FIU, www.wolfsonian.org), the Institute of Contemporary Arts Miami (ICA Miami), Dimensions Variable, the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, and Faena Art closed yesterday (Wednesday) and will remain closed through the weekend.

The Pérez Art Museum Miami was designed and engineered to withstand the vicissitudes of extreme weather.

The ICA Miami’s new building, expected to open to the public in December, is also designed to weather extreme storms. The museum “’collection is currently being held in a state-of-the-art storage facility, which also adheres to hurricane codes’”.

The Bass Museum of Art, currently undergoing expansion and expected to open in October, has an action plan to protect the building, the collection, and employees.

See:

“Miami museums hunker down ahead of Hurricane Irma” | Helen Stoilas, The Art Newspaper, 6 September 2017

“Pérez Art Museum Built ‘Like Rock of Gibralter’ for Hurricanes” | Rudabeh Shahbazi, CBS Miami, 9 June 2017

“Pérez Art Museum” | Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering

#art #museums #Miami #MiamiBeach #artcollections #resilience #realestate #climatechange #climaterisk #HurricaneIrma #Irma #smartluxury

 

 

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potential balance-sheet exposure to climate-change impacted housing & real estate markets seen as material, & potentially actionable, risk

A bank’s or insurance company’s exposure to the housing market, which might face risks from sea level rise, and to climate risk via their loan books, including via physical impacts to houses on their mortgage books, is considered by Geoff Summerhayes of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority as a key climate-change induced major or material financial risk to the bank or insurance company and a risk that is actionable by shareholders.

“The potential exposure of banks’ and insurers’ balance sheets to real estate impacted by climate change” may be risks that are “foreseeable, material and actionable now” (Summerhayes, February 17).

While much of the early focus on these risks has been on insurance firms and their exposure to losses from increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, it is now understood that there are a variety of other potential issues. Other potential issues include the potential exposure of bank’s and insurers’ balance sheets to real estate impacted by climate change.

A case has been filed on 7 August 2017 against Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia that is the first anywhere in the world to test in court how companies are required to disclose climate change-related risks in their annual reports. The case, filed by bank shareholders, claims that the bank’s 2016 directors’ report did not adequately inform investors of climate change risks and seeks an injunction to stop the bank making the same omissions in future annual reports.

A part of the claim focuses on the Commonwealth Bank not disclosing any climate-related risks as major or material risks. “When the bank talks about major or material risks to the bank, we say it should be talking about climate change,” said David Barnden, a lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia who signed the claim on behalf of the applicants.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia might face diverse risks as a result of climate change. “CBA has exposure to the Australian economy in general. We could be talking about anything from extractive projects to the housing market, which might face risks from sea level rise,” said Barnden.

The case follows a key speech given in February by Geoff Summerhayes of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority at the Insurance Council of Australia’s annual forum in Sydney. Mr. Summerhayes said that climate change poses both a physical risk and a transition risk for Australian companies.

“The terminology I would like to adopt now, consistent with the FSB Taskforce, is physical and transition risks. I won’t bore you with definitions, but for the sake of clarity:

  1. “1. physical risks stem from the direct impact of climate change on our physical environment – through, for example, resource availability, supply chain disruptions or damage to assets from severe weather.

“2. transition risks stem from the much wider set of changes in policy, law, markets, technology and prices that are part of the now agreed transition to a low-carbon economy.”

Business, he said, needs to stop reporting on climate change as a purely ethical or environmental issue and begin seeing it as a financial problem. He said: “Like all risks, it is better they are explicitly considered and managed as appropriate, rather than simply ignored or neglected.”

“While climate risks have been broadly recognised, they have often been seen as a future problem or a non-financial problem,” he said on February 17.

“To begin with a generalisation, while climate risks have been broadly recognised, they have often been seen as a future problem or a non-financial problem.

“The key point I want to make today, and that APRA wants to be explicit about, is that this is no longer the case. Some climate risks are distinctly ‘financial’ in nature. Many of these risks are foreseeable, material and actionable now. Climate risks also have potential system-wide implications that APRA and other regulators here and abroad are paying much closer attention to.”

“I think the days of viewing climate change within a purely ethical, environmental or long-term frame have passed. More and more, the conversations we are having are about the practical realities and consequences of a changing climate. One reason for this is that we now have a much more sophisticated, granular, quantifiable understanding of the impacts, risks and probability distributions around climate change. This is true on the planetary scale.”

 

See:

“Concise Statement” | Guy Abrahams (and another), Applicants, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Respondent, signed by David Barnden, Lawyer for the Applicants, 7 August 2017.

“Commonwealth Bank shareholders sue over ‘inadequate’ disclosure of climate change risks” | Michael Slezak, The Guardian, 7 August 2017

“Apra says companies must factor climate risks into business outlook” | Gareth Hutchens, The Guardian, 17 February 2017

“Australia’s new horizon: Climate change challenges and prudential risk” | Geoff Summerhayes, Executive Board Member, Insurance Council of Australia Annual Forum, Sydney, 17 February 2017

#CommonwealthBankofAustralia #climaterisk #financialrisk #materialrisk #physicalrisk #transitionrisk #realestate #housingmarket

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when buying a home in a “global warming zone”

Ron Lieber, the “Money” columnist for the New York Times, suggests a team to work with and a process to follow when purchasing a house “in a global warming zone.”

Mr. Lieber suggests:

a real estate professional

“who has deep knowledge of the local market and has lived through a few floods, fires or hurricanes”

a municipal flood expert

“preferably someone from town or city government who can explain any and all regulations you might need to know about when or if you ever want or need to fix your place up”

a local insurance expert

    • what sort of insurance claims the home has generated in the recent past
    • two reports to obtain and read: the CLUE, for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, and A-PLUS
    • “get both, follow up with the homeowner and ask about any flood insurance claims or FEMA grants that may not show up on the reports”

“Read every word of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s website on the flood insurance program before you buy a home”

a home inspector

    • who can check how well the roof might hold up in a hurricane

When out looking at houses, check the features of the houses

    • look out for special impact-resistant glass in the windows or hurricane shutters.
    • wind mitigation inspection, how well the roof might hold up

“Make like a reporter and talk to any potential neighbors”

    • ask questions

See:

“You’re Buying a Home. Have You Considered Climate Change?” | Ron Lieber, The New York Times, 2 December 2016

#realestate #climatechange #climaterisk #resilience #smartluxury #finance #insurance #floods #municipalfloodexpert #art #artcollections #museums #privatemuseums

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east & west coast ・sea level rise & things to think about now, before you invest your life savings

Gloria Tello is reconsidering. “’These are things you have to think about now, before you invest your life savings into a business.’”

A stylist who does hair and makeup for weddings, Ms. Tello had planned to capitalize on nearby bridal boutiques and open her own studio in the City of Coral Gables, Miami-Dade County, Florida. Having experienced water inundating the streets while a college student and learning of the risk of heavy neighborhood flooding over the next decades, she is reconsidering. While some businesses pile sandbags at their doors, she wonders “how small business owners can cope with it.”

Coastal California is already experiencing the effects of sea level rise.

Says San Mateo supervisor Dave Pine, “We are at the point of no return in fighting climate change and if we don’t reduce emissions there will be catastrophic impacts.”

With sea level rises set to affect more than 100,000 residents of San Mateo County (as of a 2009 analysis, “The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast”), potential property damage in the county is estimated to be about $39 billion.

California coastal communities both north and south are filing suit against 37 “carbon majors,” including Shell, Chevron, Statoil, Exxon, and Total. San Mateo and Marin Counties in northern California and San Diego County’s City of Imperial Beach claim that greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuel companies’ activities over the last 50 years have locked in substantial sea level rises, which will cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage to properties and businesses, as well as endangering lives.

San Mateo and Marin Counties and Imperial Beach claim that the defendant companies “have known for nearly 50 years years that greenhouse gas pollution from their fossil fuel products has a significant impact on the Earth’s climate and sea levels” and engaged in a “co-ordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their knowledge of these threats”.

See:

“When Rising Seas Hit Home, Hard Choices Ahead for Hundreds of US Coastal Communities” | Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2017

“Exxon, Shell and other carbon producers sued for sea level rises in California” | Laura Paddison, The Guardian, 26 July 2017

“Rising Seas in California, An Update on Sea-Level Rise Science” | Working Group of the California Ocean Protection Council – Science Advisory Team (OPC-SAT), California Ocean Science Trust, April 2017

“The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast” | California Climate Change Center, 2009

#realestate #resilience #smartluxury #art #CO2 #climaterisk #sealevelrise #ImperialBeach #SanMateoCounty #MarinCounty #Miami-DadeCounty #Miami #Florida #California

 

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iconic glass buildings ・energy neutral & aesthetically beautiful

Looking beyond roof surface to make modern commercial and residential buildings energy neutral, Physee, a tech startup headquartered in the Netherlands, has developed and installed the world’s first commercial, fully transparent solar-power-generating windows.

Ferdinand Grapperhaus, co-founder and CEO of the startup and a graduate of Delft Technical University, says “Right now, we are looking for iconic projects all over the world to show that a large glass building can be made energy neutral in an aesthetic way.”

“Large commercial estates consume a lot of energy. If you want to make these buildings energy neutral, you never have enough roof surface. Therefore, activating the buildings’ facades will significantly contribute to making the buildings energy neutral.”

Physee’s PowerWindows have solar cells installed in the edges at a specific angle. The angle allows the incoming solar light to be efficiently transformed into electricity.

The company is already working on second-generation technology that will triple the efficiency of the PowerWindows. The new technology is based on the ability of thulium to transform a broad spectrum of light into near-infrared light. Grapperhaus and his classmate Willem Kesteloo discovered this ability of thulium to transform a broad spectrum of light into near-infrared light in 2014 while studying at TU Delft.

The surface of the second generation of PowerWindows will be coated with a special, thuliam-enhanced material. This material will transforms oncoming visible light into near-infrared light. The near-infrared light will then be transported towards the solar cells at the edges of the windows.

The headquarters of Rabobank, the Netherlands’ largest bank, commissioned the first installation of Physee’s PowerWindows. The installation was unveiled in June in Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands.

Observes Physee’s Ferdinand Grapperhaus, “Large commercial estates consume a lot of energy. If you want to make these buildings energy neutral, you never have enough roof surface. Therefore, activating the buildings’ facades will significantly contribute to making the buildings energy neutral.”

The innovative solar technology has won Physee a place on the World Economic Forum‘s Technology Pioneers 2017 list.

The WEF’s 2017 list of Technology Pioneers,  announced on June 14, includes companies developing technologies including artificial intelligence, cyber security solutions and biotechnology. The pioneering companies are selected for their potential to change the world.

Physee’s presence on the list, observes Grapperhaus, shows that the world is starting to take climate change seriously:

“Ten years ago, sustainability was something that wasn’t taken very seriously — not by venture capitalists, not by many governments and neither by large corporations. What I have seen over the last three years is that corporations are becoming more and more responsible, governments are becoming more and more supportive, and venture capitalists are becoming more and more interested.”

See:

“Transparent solar power creating windows debut” | BlouinNews, 29 July 2017

“More Than a View: Windows Double as Solar Panels” | Tereza Pultarova, LiveScience, 3 July 2017

“Introducing the Technology Pioneers 2017” | World Economic Forum

Physee | Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe

“Fully tranparent solar charged PowerWindow” | Materia, 19 September 2016

#Physee #FerdinandGrapperhaus #PowerWindow #solar #solarenergy #architecture #design #climaterisk #Rabobank #finance #TUDelft #sustainability #venturecapital #WEF #WorldEconomicForum #TechnologyPioneers2017 #tech #buildingtech #startup #techstartup #CO2

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company cash flows at risk due to climate change

Between 15% and 20% of company cash flows are at risk, on average, because of climate change.

This is according to an analysis developed by global asset manager Schroders. As of March 31 of this year, Schroders is responsible for the management of £416.3 billion (€486.7 billion, $520.6 billion) of assets.

Says Schroders’ Andy Howard, global warming “is a real problem, not just a societal one but a financial one.”

This month Schroders has introduced a tool, a Climate Progress Dashboard, to track, based on 12 indicators, climate change progress. The indicators include coal production, carbon prices, corporate planning, renewable capacity, oil and gas investment, and political ambition.

The Schroders Climate Progress Dashboard will provide a snapshot of likely temperature rises based on the indicators and will help its fund managers “evaluate the challenges ahead”.

The Schroders Climate Progress Dashboard currently predicts that global temperatures are on course to rise by four degrees above pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

PKA, the Danish pension fund, has demanded that companies take action to protect their business models from climate change. Such action would include reducing their reliance on fossil fuels or moving towards greener energy. PKA is divesting “from certain companies involved in energy and carbon-intensive extraction methods, which we do not believe fit in a low-carbon economy.”

See:

“Schroders Launches Climate Progress Dashboard, Tracks Current Course Of 4°C Warming” | Joshua S. Hill, CleanTechnica, 19 July 2017

“Schroders launches Climate Progress Dashboard” | Schroders, 17 July 2017

“Schroders issues climate change warning” | Attracta Mooney, The Financial Times, 15 July 2017

“Danish pension fund PKA dumps Canadian oil” | Attracta Mooney, The Financial Times, 14 April 2017

#Schroders #assetmanagement #globalwarming #finance #risk #PKA #Denmark #climaterisk #resilience #realestate #business

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sudden heavy rains damage works in the Louvre

During the course of one hour late on Sunday evening, July 9, two inches (50mm) of rain fell on Paris during severe thunderstorms that swept across the region.

Several works in the collection of the Musée du Louvre are reported to have been damaged due to the effects of the sudden rainstorm:

  • two (“Spring” and “Fall”) of the works that make up Nicolas Poussin’s “Four Seasons” in the Sept-Cheminées room
  • “The Triumph of Mordecai” (1736) by Jean-François de Troy
  • works, housed on the second floor, by 17th-century French artists Georges de La Tour and Eustache Le Sueur

Water flowed into the mezzanine of the Denon wing also. This affected the rooms housing “Arts of Islam” and “From the Mediterranean Orient to Roman Times.” These rooms have been closed pending hygrometric stabilization

Le musée du Louvre a été touché par les intempéries d’une violence inédite qui ont frappé la région parisienne dans la nuit du 9 au 10 juillet et le 10 juillet au matin.

Les infiltrations d’eau ont entraîné la fermeture de certains espaces et l’évacuation préventive d’œuvres du département des Peintures et du département des Antiquités égyptiennes.

See:

“Violent Storms Invade the Louvre, Damaging Art by Poussin and Other Holdings” | Naomi Rea, Artnet.com, 17 July 2017

“Louvre masterpieces damaged in storm” | The Connexion, 16 July 2017

“Informations suite aux intempéries des 9 et 10 juillet 2017” | Louvre, 13 July 2017

 

#Louvre #NicolasPoussin #Jean-FrançoisdeTroy#GeorgesdeLaTour #EustacheLeSueur #ArtsofIslam #art #rain #CO2 #climaterisk #Paris

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art restitution, “conflicting realities,” & Clemens Toussaint

Marc Spiegler, now Global Director of Art Basel, wrote “an extensive profile” of art historian and art restitution specialist Clemens Toussaint in 2003. Spiegler’s article about Toussaint, The Devil and the Art Detective, appeared in Art + Auction in July of 2003. Spiegler considers this article to be among his “best ever.”

Art restitution is, in Mr. Spiegler’s words, “a minefield of ethical dilemmas and conflicting ‘realities.'” Toussaint’s work is sensitive, with passion, compelling argument, and, oftentimes, a wish for discretion on all sides. He is known to do detailed, thorough, impeccable research and has assisted clients recover paintings from collections and museums globally.

Prerequisites for restitution of works of art include a “united family front” (all known heirs need to be in agreement) and a detailed knowledge of a work’s provenance (exactly when, how, and where a work has changed hands and which country’s laws apply to each transaction).

Mr. Spiegler writes,

“An extensive profile of Clemens Toussaint, who at the time ranked among the most controversial men in the European art world. In part because he’s a tempestuous maverick in a milieu of complicit discretion. But also because art restitution is a minefield of ethical dilemmas and conflicting “realities.” Roaming from 1930s Germany to present-day Monte Carlo, this article ranks among my best ever.”

See:

“MarcSpiegler.com”

“The Devil and the Art Detective” | Marc Spiegler, Art and Auction, July 2003

For more about Clemens Toussaint and his work, see:

“Europe Celebrates Kazimir Malevich, a Pioneer in Abstract Art” | Kevin Holden Platt, The New York Times, 25 May 2016

“How Did a Stolen Malevich End Up at Sotheby’s” | Noelle Bodick, Blouin Artinfo, 4 November 2015

“Göring, Rembrandt and the Little Black Book” | Alan Riding, The New York Times, 26 March 2006

“A Monet Off the Met’s Wall Has a Controversial History” | Brooks Barnes, The Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2002

“Met to Sell Monet” | Martin Bailey for The Art Newspaper, Forbes, 1 May 2002

#art #ClemensToussaint #restitution #artrestitution #collections #MarcSpiegler #ArtBasel #KazimirMalevich #MetropolitanMuseumofArt #Sotheby’s