Some Florida residents evacuate art collections as Hurricane Ian threatens state

Florida residents are taking steps to protect collections worth millions as the storm makes landfall in the state

Hurricane Ian has left millions of people in Florida fearing for their safety. It has also left a select few fearing for the safety of their art collections.

The Daily Beast reported that both art collectors and major art galleries in the state, particularly those in the forecasted path of the storm, are working to ensure that their collections survive any damage that their towns and cities might incur in the coming days.

The threat posed by hurricanes is nothing new to Floridians, including high-level art collectors, many of whom have plans to properly store art on short notice during each hurricane season. Still, each storm brings unexpected challenges for curators and collectors alike.

“We have a collection, and we basically just deinstalled as much as we could and put it into our bathrooms and rooms with no windows. We have big windows around our whole house,” Liz Dimmitt, a collector from Belleair, near Tampa, told The Daily Beast.

Ian is one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the US in the last three decades with sustained winds of up to 150 miles per hour. The hurricane made landfall in Florida off the coast of Fort Myers on Wednesday afternoon after it swept through Cuba on Tuesday, causing the entire island to lose power.

Some 2.5 million Florida residents are under evacuation orders, though Gov Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that it is now too late to leave a select handful of coastal counties. More than 1m people in Florida are currently without power, while Cuban officials are currently working to restore power for the island’s 11m-plus residents.

The threat for Floridians in the art world comes not just from potential flooding and property damage during the height of the storm, but also from the storm’s aftermath.

“It reinforces the importance of the pre-storm plans, because after the storm, the conditions are so detrimental to the artwork,” Susan McGregor, the Fort Lauderdale-based founder and CEO of Bellissima Luxury & Fine Arts Services told The Daily Beast. “The humidity, you don’t have air conditioning, you have water damage—it’s just really, really bad for art.”

Ms McGregor said that she believes people have taken preparation for this hurricane more seriously than they took their preparation for Hurricane Irma in 2017.

The Daily Beast reported that collectors and gallery owners in some cases use services of private storage companies or attempt to hurricane-proof pieces at their own homes.