The only thing still standing at Camilla Taylor’s home and art studio in Altadena, California, is the chimney. The wildfires consumed her house and the studio, as well as hundreds of artworks—both works on paper and ceramic sculptures. The materials she used to create her art were also destroyed. “Some people have tried to be supportive, calling me up and asking to buy certain works so that I could earn some money, but those people can’t buy anything because all the pieces they wanted are gone,” she told Observer.
Taylor had just returned to her home from a brief residence at the Sitka Center, an artist colony in Otis, Oregon, with plans to ship off a group of sculptures the next day to an art gallery in Tokyo that was including her in an exhibition opening on February 1. “When I saw the flames coming up the hill, I shoved my four cats into their carriers and left.” Homeowners insurance will help Taylor rebuild, but she had no special coverage for her artwork—which she values at “hundreds of thousands of dollars if I could sell everything”) or her artmaking materials (worth thousands of dollars)—because, as she put it, “I’m not that successful of an artist that I could afford to insure my own art.”
She only has a vague idea of what her former house looks like now since she hasn’t been back. The National Guard is patrolling the area and “won’t let people in. I don’t want to be shot as a looter.”
The news coming out of Los Angeles has included numerous stories of homeowners forced to flee their homes—artists and art collectors among them. Diane Thater, a film and video artist, and her painter/sculptor husband, T. Kelly Mason, fled their home and art studio in Altadena “with only the clothes on our backs,” plus their three cats and a computer server on which digital files of her artwork and other documentation was contained. “I also grabbed our passports and the deed to our house, so I could prove that we owned it.” There was no time to prioritize, she said. Everything happened so fast.
“My husband and I went outside, saw a fire in the far distance and went back inside. An hour later, we heard this tremendous explosion, which turned out to be a transformer blowing up somewhere. We went back outside and saw the whole mountain on fire, getting very close to us, and so we knew we had to just get out. It was fucking terrifying.”
At present, they are staying with friends in the nearby town of Mount Washington. The computer drives Mason grabbed from the house before it burned are in his van. “I’m not putting them in this house because there are reports of new high winds coming up.” Preparing for another evacuation is never far from his mind.
Unlike many other artists affected by the L.A. fires, Thater and her husband had both homeowners insurance and studio insurance, as well as fire insurance—“I always complained about how expensive fire insurance was, but now I’m glad I had it,” she told Observer—but, like Taylor, they had no separate insurance for the artworks themselves, now all gone. When Mason ventured back to their house the next day, the fires were not yet put out, and what he found was a “smoldering toxic pile,” as both artists worked with hazardous art materials.
“We couldn’t have afforded fine art insurance,” Mason said. “We had a workable situation; we had a mortgage we could afford, but we couldn’t have added on fine art insurance.”
What’s next for the artists impacted by the L.A. fires
It will likely be some time before anyone can reliably calculate the losses—of art, art supplies or otherwise—caused by the 2025 L.A. fires, which have not been put out or even contained. “People haven’t gone back to their homes to assess the situation,” Mary Pontilla, senior vice president and national fine art product leader for the Risk Strategies insurance brokerage firm, told Observer. When that happens, the artists affected may find that they have their work cut out for them when it comes to recovering the value of lost artworks.
Various insurance companies have what they call “studio insurance” or “artist floaters” that offer levels of protection of the physical premises of the studio as well as the tools, materials, furniture and artwork (commissioned or not, completed or unfinished) therein. In addition, artists can purchase transit insurance (for artworks being shipped to a gallery or art fair, for example), general liability coverage (for someone hurt moving the artwork, for instance, or a visitor injured in the studio), workmen’s compensation (for the artist’s employees) and disability (if the artist becomes unable to work).
Not every artist requires every type of insurance coverage, but all artists have something to lose when fire damages a studio, even if they’ve hardly sold any works. Regular homeowners policies would likely cover damage to a studio in one’s house if the artist is a hobbyist (although the existence of a studio and its contents should be noted on the policy), but it often is recommended that artists who earn any money from selling their work should consider special studio insurance. Homeowners policies cover personal items but they don’t include a business run out of one’s home. In some cases, they even address it by directly excluding it.
In L.A., the burden of proving that something of value was lost, and how much that loss is, will fall to the artists affected. Valuations and completed and unfinished artworks that have not been commissioned can become an area of contention between artists and insurance companies. Insurance companies may issue a policy based on an artist’s valuation of their work but later dispute the amount claimed after a loss.
For many artists, funds paid out by insurance will only cover a portion of replacing what’s been destroyed—and some things are by their nature irreplaceable. Today (Jan. 15), a coalition of major arts organizations and philanthropists led by the J. Paul Getty Trust announced the creation of the L.A. Arts Community Fire Relief Fund to support artists through emergency grants funded by a large group of benefactors that includes nonprofits like Arison Arts Foundation, grantmaking organizations like Trellis Art Fund, galleries and arts organizations like Hauser & Wirth and Frieze and numerous artist foundations, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Meanwhile, ARTNews reports that some artists are already raising money for future rebuilding efforts through social media or on crowdfunding platforms. When it comes to insurance, the artists most likely to see their claims approved will likely be those who have kept good records of what they have sold, to whom and for how much, as well as a list of all the pieces they had in their homes or studios and the value they placed on them.
