Presenter Spotlight: 2023 ASA International Conference–Personal Property

ASA International Conference is the leading event for the global valuation profession. Celebrating its 86th year, the Conference attracts thought leaders, practitioners, allied professionals, vendor partners, government agency personnel, and more from all parts of the world. This paramount event provides an experience unlike other appraisal conferences, offering timely content for all appraisal professionals spanning Business Valuation, Personal Property, Machinery & Equipment, Real Property, Gems & Jewelry as well as Appraisal Review & Management.

Available in a hybrid format, the ASAIC23 offers the convenience of both live and virtual programming where you can learn and connect in your preferred environment. Join us on-site in New Orleans or from the comfort of your home or office—the choice is yours! Both formats allow you to explore the latest ideas, trends and best practices and interact and engage with fellow professionals. Don’t miss this exciting celebration of exceptional education and networking with leaders in the appraisal profession.

Don’t miss these industry experts presenting our Personal Property sessions*:

Ivo Kostov, Ph.D, a member of ASA, is a certified appraiser BV, MTS, RP, & FAFI (acc. the BG legislation). He has over 19 years of experience (with over 3000 appraisal reports) in valuing different types of businesses, receivables, financial assets and financial institutions, real estate, machinery & technical specialties for a wide range of purposes for the needs of banks, government agencies, municipalities, regional administrations, courts, private and state bailiffs, insolvency practitioners, firms that are involved in different branches of economics (incl. construction and investment companies), law firms, accounting offices, REITs as well as natural persons. Since 2008, a Chief ASST Professor at the Business, Investment, Real Estate Department at the University of Economics – Varna (BG). He is a highly sought-after course developer, instructor, author, and presenter. Dr. Kostov has been a member of ASA (International Virtual Chapter, NorCal Chapter, European Chapter) since 2021, a member of the Polish Real Estate Scientific Society (TNN) since 2015, a co-founder member of the Chamber of Independent Appraisers in Bulgaria (CIAB) since 2009, a member of various international editorial and scientific committees, and an active volunteer with experience in management bodies of valuation profession organizations (VPOs). He owns two trademarks: IvoKo®, Dr Kostov®. Ivo Kostov is an author of more than 40 publications in Bulgaria, Poland, Spain, Italy, Russia, USA.

Susan M. Golashovsky, FASA, is a personal property appraiser with multiple specialties, including Antiques and Decorative Arts, Antique Furniture, General/Residential Contents and American Folk Art. A past International President and a Fellow of the American Society of Appraisers, Ms. Golashovsky is an Accredited Senior Appraiser of the American Society of Appraisers with over twenty-five years of experience. Susan’s subject matter experience was gained over twenty-five years as an antiques dealer and by attending educational programs such as Winterthur Museums’ Winter Institute on Early American Material Culture. She is a frequent presenter regarding connoisseurship, and methodology, at Personal Property Discipline Conferences.

Liza Hickey, ASA, earned her senior appraiser accreditation in Antiques & Decorative Arts in 2015. The following year, she joined the Northern California ASA chapter Board of Directors as Secretary and later moved on to the role of Treasurer. Her appraisal practice is concentrated in the decorative arts, typically silver, ceramics, glass and other functional artwork. She has worked in the personal property appraisal field since 2007 and has a master’s degree in Art History. Liza is based in San Francisco and is currently head of appraisal services at the Roth Art Group.

Darcy Tell, AM, ASA, is an accredited member of the American Society of Appraisers in the Antiques and Decorative arts specialty. She has worked in the art trade and, for over 30 years, in the non-profit sector, including 29 years at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. Darcy is the author of Times Square Spectacular (Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2007), the first and only visual history of Times Square, which was awarded First Prize for Best Four-Color Scholarly Reference Book by the Book Industry Guild of New York in 2008. In addition to European and American fine and decorative arts and antiques, Darcy specializes in research for provenance, attribution, and publication; in museum history; in the history of taste; and in American art, art documentation, and archives.

Fran Zeman, M.A., FASA, a member of ASA since 1980, has earned an M.A. in Art History and holds multiple personal property accreditations in Fine Art, Antiques/Decorative Arts, and Oriental Rugs. She has been Chairperson of the International Personal Property Committee, Chancellor of the College of Fellows, Personal Property Vice-Chair for the ASA Board of Examiners, is an instructor of Principles of Valuation courses and specializes in complex assignments. Fran has published articles and presented on various appraisal topics. With offices in San Francisco and New York, Fran is an active member of the ASA NorCal Chapter and serves as its current Personal Property Chair and Chapter President.

Mel Buchanan has been the RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts & Design at the New Orleans Museum of Art since 2013. She has curated original exhibitions including Personalities in Clay: American Studio Ceramics from the E. John Bullard Collection (2017), Atomic #13: Aluminum in 20th-Century Design (2021) and Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans (2022). Buchanan serves on the board of The Decorative Arts Trust and of the American Ceramic Circle, for which she chairs the annual symposium. Before NOMA, Buchanan worked at The RISD Museum and at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and holds degrees from Yale University and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.

Amanda Winstead is a fine art appraiser and private art dealer specializing in the art of the American South. She was a fine art specialist and Director of the Consignments and Appraisals Dept. at Neal Auction Company in New Orleans from 1996 to 2004. She has been an Accredited Member of the Appraisers Association of America since 2000 and incorporated her own independent appraisal firm in 1999. Amanda has appraised many important private and institutional collections throughout the Southeast, including the collections of the LSU Museum of Art, the portraiture collection of the Louisiana Supreme Court, Longue Vue House & Gardens, the Masur Museum of Art, the Hilliard University Art Museum and the Dusti Bongé Art Foundation among others. She is regularly engaged by the FBI and US Attorney’s office in New Orleans. She recently published the catalogue “The Orleans Gallery: 65 Years Later” in conjunction with an exhibition held in December 2022. Amanda has a MBA from the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, a BA in Art History from Newcomb College at Tulane University and has completed the Certificate Program in the Appraisal of Fine and Decorative Art at New York University. She has served on the board of Arts New Orleans for over ten years, including five years as Board Chair, and currently holds the position of Vice Chairman. She is the committee chair of LUNA Fête, the largest digital art and technology festival in the country.

Charles Rosoff, ASA, MRICS, is the president of Appraisal Services Associates, a firm of appraisers that provide forensic valuations of Fine Art, Antiques, Decorative Arts, Residential and Office contents. He has been appraising since 1984. He was the Legal Issues Editor of the Personal Property Journal of the ASA, was on the faculty of the American Law Institute, American Bar Association (ALI-ABA) Post-Mortem Planning and Estate Administration, and participated at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York program Divorce in New York in the 21st Century. Mr. Rosoff has also taught Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) for the Appraisal Foundation, taught the 4th required course Personal Property Valuation—The Legal and Regulatory Environment of Appraisal Practice for the ASA at various universities, taught Appraisal Research Methods at New York University, and has testified as an expert witness numerous times in multiple jurisdictions.

Mark S. Campbell, CPA, ABV, CFF, is Managing Director at Scout Valuations LLC. Campbell provides attorneys, high net worth individuals, public and privately held companies and business owners with valuation services for business planning and succession, shareholder disputes, buy/sell agreements, financial reporting, mergers and acquisitions, gifting interests, estate planning, taxation, matrimonial dissolutions, restructurings and reorganizations and litigation support services. Mark has provided hundreds of valuations to clients across a variety of industries and purposes.

Garrett Schwartz, ASA, CEA, is a senior equipment appraiser and a managing partner of Sencer Appraisal Associates. He holds an Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA) designation from the American Society of Appraisers (ASA) with a specialty in Machinery & Technical Specialties, and a Certified Equipment Appraiser (CEA) designation from the Association of Machinery and Equipment Appraisers (AMEA). He is an active member of the ASA, currently serving as the ASA International President. Garrett served as editor of the fourth edition of ASA’s foundational textbook, Valuing Machinery & Equipment: The Fundamentals of Appraising Machinery and Technical Assets, published in 2020. Based in Northern California, Garrett has performed equipment appraisals for clients across the United States, Mexico, Asia, and Europe. His clients have included the United States Department of Justice, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the United States military, local and regional banks, charitable organizations, business brokers, legal and accounting firms, private individuals, and business clients from single-proprietorships to Fortune 5 corporations.

Beryl F. Hunter, M.A., is an Asst. Archivist at the New Orleans Notarial Archives Research Center and is the founder and owner of Elelyon Cultural Solutions LLC. Hunter is an author, historic scribe, cultural strategist, and inspirational speaker. She has studied sociology and documents visual historic traditions and holds a Master of Art in Museum Studies from Southern University at New Orleans.

James Zemaitis is a 20th Century design curator and market expert, specializing in exhibitions, private secondary market sales and museum relations at one of the world’s leading galleries of historic and contemporary design. He was a Senior Vice President, 20th Century Design at Sotheby’s New York for nine years and is currently Director of Museum Relations, R & Company, a design gallery in New York City.

Jennifer Mass, Ph.D. is the President and Founder of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, LLC, a scientific consulting firm that addresses questions about artworks’ attribution, state of preservation and mechanisms of degradation. SAFA assists art conservators, museums, art lawyers, appraisers, auction houses, and art insurers in their cultural heritage assessment and preservation missions. Jennifer is also Professor of Cultural Heritage Science at Bard Graduate Center. She has developed and taught scientific curricula to art conservators and art historians for twenty-four years and is the former Director of the Scientific Research Laboratory at The Winterthur Museum. Jennifer earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from Cornell University and conducted her postdoctoral work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has published numerous articles and volumes in the conservation literature and is on the international editorial board for Springer Verlag’s Cultural Heritage Science series. Jennifer also leads the TEFAF NY Scientific Vetting Committee.

Douglas Bort is the Founder, and Lead Investigator of Odyssey Global Consulting, LLC. Prior to that, he spent twenty-one years as a Special Agent with the United States Customs Service and Homeland Security Investigations. He is a Subject Matter Expert in the investigation of art and cultural property crimes. He conducted many complex international investigations, undercover operations; and trained many other law enforcement personnel on how to investigate art and cultural property crimes.

Renée Vara, MA, AAA, UPAP, is the founder of Vara Art, with over 25 years of valuation expertise with a specialty in postwar, contemporary, and emerging art. She has work with over 5,000 collections including ARTnews Top 200 with holdings up to 2B. She is an award-winning past Board Member for AAA and NYU Educator, recognized for her contributions to the field of appraisal studies. Ms. Vara has been cited in more than 40 major media outlets including The Art Newspaper, Forbes, Artnews, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. She is an active public lecturer, sharing her expertise with more than 50 organizations and institutions. In the production of contemporary culture, she has curated more than 40 public art shows at international venues including the Venice Biennale and Istanbul Biennale. Ms. Vara is also recognized artist’s rights advocate and expert, who has been formative to protecting creative rights by winning the landmark case (5Pointz v. G&M Reality) for the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), which has large implications within the art market and valuation practices for living artists.

Lydia Blackmore is the Decorative Arts Curator at The Historic New Orleans Collection. She earned an MA and a certificate in museum studies from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware; she also holds a degree in history from the College of William and Mary. She has over 10 years of experience studying and curating American Decorative Arts in public and private collections such as Colonial Williamsburg, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and the US Supreme Court. At The Historic New Orleans Collection, Blackmore has curated and co-curated several exhibitions, including Goods of Every Description: Shopping in New Orleans, Pieces of History: 10 years of Decorative Arts Field Work in the Gulf South, and Making Mardi Gras.

Rustin Levenson, FAIC, FIIC, RAAR, graduated with a degree in Art History from Wellesley College and was trained in conservation at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum. She worked on the conservation staff of the Canadian Conservation Institute, the National Gallery of Canada and the Metropolitan Museum of Art before founding ArtCare Conservation, with studios in Miami, Florida, Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. Her studio teams treat paintings from museums, private, and corporate collections. She is co-author of Seeing Through Paintings, Yale University Press, and contributed chapters to The Expert versus the Object (Oxford University Press) and The Conservation of Easel Paintings (Routledge Press). In addition to her publications, Rustin lectures extensively to professional groups, universities, and public forums. She is a Fellow in both the American Institute for Conservation and the International Institute for Conservation. In 2015 she was honored with a Residency at the American Academy in Rome. In 2021 she was made an Honorary Member of the American Institute for Conservation.

Sandie Tropper, FASA, is an accredited appraiser in fine art in the Washington, D.C. area. She is an instructor for both POV classes, the Fair Market Value class, the Report Writing class and USPAP.

Karin Gross, Esq., is a Special Counsel in the IRS’s Office of Chief Counsel in Washington, DC, where she focuses on the federal charitable contribution deduction. A member of the DC Bar, she is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School and also holds a tax law degree from Georgetown University Law School.