People
Tobias Czudej, AAA, and Susan McDonough, AAA, founded Art Valuation Audit to address the growing need for assurance and risk management in the art valuation sector. Because art appraisal is a self-regulated profession, quality, competency, and reliability vary greatly.
The partners, both of whom maintain independent art appraisal practices, came together over a shared belief that users of art appraisals benefit from high-quality, third-party assurance that their appraisals are reliable, credible, and free of material misstatement. Czudej and McDonough are both certified members of the Appraisers Association of America.
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Tobias Czudej
Partner
Tobias Czudej AAA is an appraiser and advisor specialized in Post-War, Contemporary and Emerging Art. He is a certified member of the Appraisers Association of America (AAA) and the founder and principal of Tobias Czudej LLC, a fine art consultancy firm providing professional services to leading public and private collections, family offices, foundations and institutions worldwide.
Czudej began his career at Gagosian Gallery, moving on to run the London Soho location for Pace where he had the opportunity to work with artists and estates such as Cy Twombly, Mike Kelley, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko and Claes Oldenburg.
He is additionally recognised as a curator, having organized over thirty exhibitions at institutions and commercial galleries worldwide featured in publications such as Art Forum, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times, and more.
Known equally as a market professional with over a decade of experience at the top level of the blue-chip art market as well as a cutting-edge curator of contemporary art, Czudej is uniquely positioned to appraise artworks at all levels of the contemporary art market as well as provide strategic guidance for short and long-term goals including comprehensive collection assessment, development and management. Czudej holds a BA in Fine Art from Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Recent lectures and talks participated in include: Yale University, New Haven, USA; Deloitte, Switzerland; Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK; Goldsmiths University, London, UK; CMCA, Maine, USA.
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Susan McDonough
Partner
Susan McDonough, AAA is a certified member of the Appraisers Association of America (AAA), admitted in the categories of Postwar, Contemporary & Emerging Art, Impressionist & Modern Art, American Art, Photography, and Prints. She is the president of McDonough Fine Art Appraisals, LLC, a boutique appraisal practice based in San Francisco, California.
Susan appraises 19th, 20th, and 21st century art across all media. She is a past member of the Board of Directors (2014–2021) of the Appraisers Association of America and currently teaches in the Association’s Comprehensive Appraisal Studies Program (CASP). She has extensive experience appraising artwork for insurance, tax, and litigation purposes at the highest level of the art market.
A graduate of Columbia University, New York, Susan has a B.A. in Art History and Latin American studies. She began her professional career at New York’s CDS Gallery and The Americas Society, working on the landmark survey exhibition “Latin American Art of the Twentieth Century” sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. She subsequently worked at William Doyle, New York, Hackett-Freedman, San Francisco, and Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco.
Susan has extensive editorial and publishing experience having worked as an editor at The Journal of Art, Abbeville Press, and Harper Collins. She has written numerous articles and edited monographs and exhibition catalogues on a wide variety of art and artists.