ALUMNI PROFILES - ETHAN VALLARINO ’07, ART ASSETS

One of the things Ethan Vallarino appreciates about his Millbrook education is that his teachers never expected him to simply accept what they presented on the surface. Rather, he learned how to peel back layers and uncover solutions and steps needed to create a finished product. This is the same approach he uses as chief executive officer at his newest venture, ARTBnk. He identified a problem: how could art owners quickly and easily determine the value of their tradable art from a reliable source? Upon peeling back many layers, Ethan and his team came to a definitive conclusion: create a system to make the valuation of art a scientific, data-driven process instead of one filled with egos and opinions. Building the business model was a bit more complicated, but the road to ARTBnk was organic for Ethan.

After graduating from Millbrook in 2007, he attended St. Lawrence University, majoring in financial economics and minoring in fine arts. At St. Lawrence, he focused on drawing, painting, and sculpture and studied art history as well. “Art became almost therapy for me. I’d go into the studio, and my intuition would take over. Working within any medium, it’s almost like capturing your mood for the day, the week, the month – as long as it takes you to complete it.”

As a sophomore, Vallarino landed an internship with ArtAssure LTD, an art financing firm run by Asher Edelman (The character of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street was based in part on Edelman.) Upon graduating from St. Lawrence, Vallarino joined ArtAssure on a full-time basis as their executive director of business development, a job with a steep learning curve. After becoming well acquainted with high-end art sales, purchases, loans, and financing, Ethan knew he could apply this knowledge to a new venture, and he

co-founded Duveen Capital. This boutique finance firm specializes in providing fine art owners with innovative and customized loan programs, auction advances, factoring, and auction guarantees. Through Duveen Capital Ethan offers clients access to liquidity in a timely, discrete, and efficient manner while customizing offerings to suit specific individual and financial needs. What makes Duveen different and better in this particular financial space? While sellers typically wait months for buyers to complete their transactions, Duveen covers the settlement factor upfront, so sellers get paid on the day of the sale. Duveen profits from the fees charged (on a percentage of the sale) for this service.

Still, Ethan recognized that there was something glaringly absent in the world of art investments—a centralized and normalized database for art valuation. Art valuation has historically been a very subjective matter. Now, ARTBnk is starting to play a vital role in providing immediate and accurate art valuations for multiple user types looking to invest, protect, or monetize art across a wide array of corporations and institutions.

When ARTBnk was first formed in 2017, the company began gathering and entering art sales data from many of the major auction houses. There was a lot of accessible data, but it was in a complete state of disarray. A far more arduous task than initially anticipated, the data needed to be normalized, and artificial intelligence (AI) would make the process more efficient and manageable. But working with AI and this level of technology was no easy feat. The team began by designing specific software sets on the back end to hold the data and then started the process of machine learning. “AI is as good as the instructions given. Once it knows the instructions, it gets smarter and stronger. Once we were able to teach the technology what it needed to know, it continued to get better.”

After years of data manipulation and AI development and feedback from early adopters, ARTBnk has recently rolled out its app and platform to a broad userbase. Using ARTBnk’s software, it is now possible to get real-time market valuations for tradable art based on sales history as their AI algorithms find comparable matches. Where it used to be necessary to deal with a broker that lived and breathed art, you can now get market insights in the palm of your hand. Free services include cloud-based storage for your art collection, manual search capability within the ARTBnk database, and system-generated auction alerts. For those clients who want AI-driven valuation—ARTBnk Value—there are different pricing structures, including pay-as-you-go and subscription options. It is expert software for everybody. ARTBnk brings a level of transparency and efficiency to industries like insurance, foundations, asset managers, museums, and even the IRS. As CEO, Ethan is working on new partnerships and expanding platform adoption every day. The company has plans to valuate other high-end luxury items soon, so users will be able to get real-time market values for items beyond paintings, including sculptures, watches, jewelry, handbags, exotic cars, and other auction items.

While this venture keeps Vallarino busy enough, he has started to make art again just for the fun of it. When time allows, he moves from his office space into his studio space, adding layers, colors, and textures to his own paintings and taking advantage of the intrinsic and relaxing effects of simply creating something beautiful.