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At Ebbio, the Parisian Art Consultancy IDA Offers Artists the Luxury of Unstructured Time

Founders Florence Marmiesse and Camilla D'Alfonso invite four artists biannually to a restored farmhouse outside Siena to experiment freely amid olive trees and lavender fields, away from the pressures of corporate commissions and art world hype.

IDA, a four-year-old Parisian consulting agency specialized in the development of art acquisitions, exhibitions, custom commissions and events, primarily connects corporate enterprises with artists. But founders Florence Marmiesse, a French art consultant who came up through Sotheby's and Artcurial, and Camilla D'Alfonso, an Italian photographer, also launched a short-term summer residency in Italy as a distinctive way to foster artist projects.

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Since founding the agency, they’ve teamed with players in the world of hospitality—hotels, restaurants, real estate—to, as Marmiesse puts it, determine “how art can be injected in different aspects of companies.” It’s imperative, on the one hand, to understand the company’s needs: “we make sure it’s made on budget, it’s made on time, the deadlines are respected,” but also, “we do a lot of pedagogy”—meaning educating organizations about artistic value and pushing their thinking to be more elastic.

(The two are regularly contacted by hotels that say, we have a wall, can you fill it? “We’re like: that’s not really the way it works to create an exhibition,” says Marmiesse. D’Alfonso affirms: “We’re not decorators.”)

On the flip side, Marmiesse adds, the artist’s needs are just as important. “You need to pay the artist; they need to be raised up… we, as the intermediary, are making sure the artists feel well understood and respected, that they have freedom and are able to do their art properly. We make sure the artists are not used as a marketing tool: we want to value their work.”

Throughout the year, they accompany their clients on art buying missions, supporting patronage and commissions. They’ve collaborated with modeling agency Eileen Ford and Hoxton........

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