Shipping art out of East Africa — what every artist learns the hard way

The single most expensive line in an emerging-market gallery's P&L is freight that lost a shipment. Two practical rules from artists shipping out of Nairobi and Mombasa every month: 1) every piece needs a commercial invoice that names the artist, the medium and a declared value that matches the gallery's purchase order; and 2) use a broker who has cleared art before — "oil on canvas" gets stopped at Frankfurt if a generalist broker codes it as "household goods".