How to store paintings in a small studio, and find any of them again

How should paintings be stored when they are not on the wall?

Upright, separated and raised. The Canadian Conservation Institute, the federal body that advises Canadian museums on the care of their collections, sets out the rules in its storage note for paintings: support works at least 7 to 10 cm above the floor, put cardboard or another rigid board between each one, and stack no more than four or five together.

The floor rule is about water as much as dust. A leaking radiator or a freshly mopped floor reaches the bottom edge of a canvas first. Padded blocks or a pair of wooden battens are enough to lift a stack clear of both.

Flat storage belongs to works on paper. A stretched canvas laid flat sags, and anything set on top of it presses through.

Can you lean canvases against each other?

Yes, with a board between each one and in order of size. The CCI note says to place the largest against the wall, then the next in size, down to the smallest. The outermost painting is turned to face inward towards a separator, so that nobody walking past brushes a painted surface.

Size order matters because of the stretcher, the wooden frame the canvas is pulled over. A small canvas leaning against the back of a large one presses its corner into the open linen between the bars. The CCI's basic care guide warns against any pressure on the back of a canvas, even a finger, because cracks can appear in the paint on the front long afterwards.

The separator should be slightly larger than the work it protects, so that it takes every edge. A sheet of corrugated plastic screwed to the back of the stretcher, which CCI suggests as the first protection for a canvas that moves often, does the same job and travels with the work.

Where in the studio should the rack go?

Against an inside wall, out of the sun, in the steadiest part of the room. CCI advises against damp basements and dry attics and recommends a place where relative humidity, the moisture in the air as a share of the most it could hold at that temperature, stays between 40 and 60 percent and does not change quickly.

The speed of change counts as much as the level. A rack against an outside wall that is cold at night and sunlit in the afternoon gives the work both problems in one day. A hygrometer costs less than a tube of good paint and tells you within a week whether the corner you chose is a steady one.

Sun is the rule without exceptions. CCI's guidance is that direct sunlight should never fall on a painting at any point in the day, which in most studios means the rack stands opposite the window rather than beneath it.

What should touch the painted surface?

As little as possible, and nothing that grips. Glassine, a smooth, dense paper that does not stick, is what art handlers commonly lay against a dry paint surface before anything else. Bubble wrap goes outside that layer with the bubbles facing out, because in a warm room the pattern can press into a soft varnish.

Polyethylene sheeting is a cover, not a wrap. CCI recommends draping it over storage under overhead pipes, to catch drips and dust, and that is where it belongs: over the rack, loose, with air around the work.

How do you find one painting in a rack of forty?

Give the rack an address and the work a number. Letter the bays and number the slots within each, so that every stack has a place called something like B2. Write the work's inventory number, a unique code such as 2026.014, on the back of the stretcher in pencil, and again on the outside of any wrapping. A wrapped canvas is the hardest object in a studio to identify.

Then keep the address with the record rather than in your head. When a work goes from B2 to a group show in Ghent and comes back to C1, the record should move with it. The day a call asks for six recent works with their dimensions, that is the difference between an afternoon of unwrapping and ten minutes at a desk.

Photograph the work before it is wrapped: front, back and the label. The picture of the parcel is what lets you match it to the record a year later.

Where should the storage record live?

With the rest of the work's details. A separate list of rack positions goes out of date the first time something is moved in a hurry. The guide to cataloguing your own artwork sets out the fields worth keeping for every piece, and location is one of them.

Samlio keeps a location on every work, beside its images, measurements and sales, and a spreadsheet that already holds rack positions can be imported with that column mapped. It does not print labels or draw a plan of your rack. The pencil and the letters on the bays are still yours.

When the rack is in order and you want something to send the work to, the European open call calendar lists what closes next.