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Rebecca Fine Launches Metis, a New Art Lender Powered by Winston Artory Group Data

The same data that's behind UBS & Art Basel market reports will let Metis underwrite loans with a level of deep intelligence that conventional lenders can't match.

Athena Art Finance was among the first firms to establish itself as a go-to lender for collectors seeking a more flexible way to turn their high-value art collections into liquidity, and since its founding in 2015, the firm has provided nearly $1 billion in art financing to collectors. Now, longtime CEO and founding member Rebecca Fine is launching a new venture, Metis Fine Art Finance, which will operate in partnership with Winston Artory Group. Joining Fine in the venture is veteran art lender Giovanna Quattrone, who will serve as Metis’s director and brings years of experience in art-collateral underwriting, market analysis and risk management from their time working together at Athena.

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Via the partnership, Metis will gain access to constantly updated valuations and top-level analytics made possible by last year’s strategic merger of art advisory and appraisal firm Winston Art Group with Artory’s pioneering Web3 infrastructure and institutional-grade data platform. That data will fuel Metis’s financing platform, informing and accelerating its underwriting with a level of deep art market intelligence not yet available to conventional lenders. “With all these invaluable insights into the full collection lifecycle, Metis can lead with conviction where others may hesitate, and always on the collectors’ side,” Fine tells Observer.

The company’s name draws on Greek mythology, launching with particularly good timing as Christopher Nolan’s epic film The Odyssey shatters box-office records. Metis was Zeus’s first wife, his most trusted adviser and the mother of Athena. As the Greek Titaness of wisdom, she is the muse behind Metis Fine Art Finance, which aims to tap into that wisdom to navigate the complexities of the art market, solve seemingly intractable problems and consistently provide independent, wise advice.

(Zeus swallowed Metis while she was pregnant after hearing a prophecy that a son born to her would overthrow him; Athena was later born from Zeus’s head. For Fine, this myth provided both an engaging origin story and a sense of symmetry between Athena and the new company.)

Metis Fine Art Finance addresses what Fine sees as a persistent gap in the art-finance market. “Art has matured into a serious asset class, but its financing has not kept pace,” she says, noting that collectors often have to choose between banks that do not understand art and market players, such as........

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