Our Launch

Friends,

I am pleased to announce the formal launch of McDermott-Moore Fine Art LLC, a private art consultancy dedicated to helping you identify and acquire works of fine art to treasure and steward. If you are interested in growing or beginning your collection, I would be honored to help. McDermott-Moore stands ready to identify works of interest, negotiate and purchase on your behalf, and provide considered opinions on potential acquisitions.

McDermott-Moore is an extension of a long-burning enthusiasm that began in earnest while studying abroad at the University of Cambridge. Down the street from my college was the Fitzwilliam Museum, a small but world-class collection of art and antiquities, completely free to students. I haunted its galleries of seventeenth- through nineteenth-century paintings and, upon returning stateside, began doing the same at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and eventually the Art Institute of Chicago.

My time at a large law firm afforded me the opportunity to begin collecting on a modest scale. For over a decade, I have regularly perused the offerings of American and international auction houses, and although my own buying has slowed with the growth of my family, I continue to keep abreast of market trends and have for some years informally advised friends on contemplated purchases. McDermott-Moore will allow that enthusiasm to be channeled into your acquisition of timeless works of beauty.

Nota bene: I have precisely zero professional or academic credentials in fine art. If credentials matter to you in an art consultant — and it is entirely reasonable that they should — our universities graduate no shortage of art historians looking for work. But if you're interested instead in one friend's taste and judgment, I would love the opportunity to work with you. While my interest and knowledge are most concentrated in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European and American painting, I am happy to assist with acquisitions across mediums, periods, and price points.

For now, McDermott-Moore is growing through word of mouth. If you have friends or colleagues who might be interested in speaking, I'd love to meet them — please don't hesitate to connect us.

Yours,

Will O’Hara