Written in collaboration with Kevin Lay, director of Operations at ARCIS

Moving along in our series about how new technology impacts the art world, this week we look at the art storage and logistics industry. Since the year 2000, decades-old (even centuries-old) hand-performed methods and procedures have gone the way of the dodo.

“When I started in this industry 22 years ago there was virtually no technology,” says Kevin Lay, director of operations at ARCIS, a 21st century art storage center in Manhattan that opens in spring. “You had a sprinkler system; a rudimentary HVAC system providing humidity or taking humidity out of the air; and a central station type security keypad with motion detectors; and that was about it.”