Simon Hartas

Not just an artist....
I have maintained a 30+ year career as a professional Art Handler.

Beginning my career as a Museum Assistant to Conservation at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra also fed my soul as an aspiring artist just out of art school. I moved to Sydney in 1986 and began work in the private fine art logistics sector, where I became an early adopter of world’s best art handling practices. The industry was something of a breeding ground for artists and musicians. Places like the MCA were also nurturing artists in their ranks of preparators. In 1994 I was included in the second Young Art New Galleries program operated by the MCA.

Family and buying into a fine art logistics venture put my personal artistic ambitions on hold for some time while I continued with a art handling, packing and crating career. Over the last 30 years I’ve worked with a broad range of artists across many continents and many disciplines. I’ve hung Picassos, crated Jackson Pollacks ‘Blue Poles’, held a child’s rattle excavated from Pompeii, I’ve sat in a RAAF Hercules, with my crates and equipment, doing a strategic landing (super steep and fast due to gunfire in the area) at Phnom Penh, Cambodia to extract ancient Khmer scul...

I enrolled at Canberra School of Art in 1982 where I fell in love with painting. Personal circumstances cut short my study and I moved to Sydney in 1986 but I continued to paint.