Technology, trust, and provenance in art

Art, whether acquired as an investment or for personal interest, holds tremendous value for collectors, not only in financial terms but also emotionally and culturally. Many collectors devote significant time, resources, and discernment to curating their collections, whether in researching artists, cultivating relationships with dealers and auction houses, and acquiring works over decades with care and intention.

Yet it is not uncommon for such a collector, years or even decades later, to find that the value of their collection is unexpectedly compromised by issues of provenance. Records may have been misplaced during relocations, damaged by time, or retained by intermediaries who are no longer in business. Key transactions may have taken place privately, across borders, or in an era when documentation standards were less rigorous. Even the collector may no longer recall the precise circumstances of acquisition, and the original parties involved may be untraceable. 

For collectors, provenance and authenticity are key to preserving value and marketability. A clear chain of title and documents evidencing authenticity reassure buyers, insurers, auction houses, and financial institutions.

The practical challenge of provenance

The challenge could be particularly acute for older pieces, antiques, heirlooms, and large private or institutional collections. Provenance documents may span decades or centuries and take many forms: handwritten receipts, auction catalogues, correspondence, loan agreements, expert opinions, and photographs. These records could be dispersed across jurisdictions, stored inconsistently, or passed down informally through generations.

Physical documents are vulnerable to loss, damage, misfiling, or forgery. As collections grow in size and complexity, keeping track of what is needed to establish provenance becomes an increasingly difficult exercise.

There is no single, central, authoritative database that records provenance and chain of title for artworks in the way that land registries or company registries do. Outside of specialist databases such as the Art Loss Register, which focuses narrowly on stolen, missing, or looted works, provenance information remains highly fragmented.

Technology and art: A new paradigm for partnership?

For many years, technology was not something that immediately came to mind when art was discussed. The art market has traditionally relied on trust, reputation, and personal relationships, and has historically been slow to adopt technological solutions. But then the boom in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) hit the art market, and for a time the excitement was palpable. NFTs are digital tokens that represent a unique item on a blockchain. At their peak they changed how ownership of digital works was conceptualized — most famously when Beeple’s Everydays: the First 5000 Days NFT sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s in 2021, demonstrating for the first time that blockchain-registered digital art could command top-tier auction prices. (The afterlife of that moment has also moved geographically closer to home than many might realise: the buyer of the work, Vignesh Sundaresan, has since established an art space in Singapore, Padimai Art & Tech Studio located at Tanjong Pagar Distripark.)

According to the Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2025 “since peaking in 2021, the overall NFT market has been in continuous decline, quarter after quarter. By (the last quarter) of 2024, the market across all NFT assets had more or less returned to the volume levels observed before the peak in 2020.” 

In the 2026 report, it was noted that online art sales fell globally to $9.2 billion, their lowest level since 2019. Dealers reported a significant drop in the share of their sales made through exclusively digital channels, and auction house online-only sales were focused on mid and lower price levels, while the highest-priced lots were sold in live sales.

Notwithstanding these developments, it is worth nothing that technology, when deployed thoughtfully and outside of speculative trends, can still potentially function as a powerful aid to provenance, helping collectors organise, preserve, and present their records more effectively. Prominent art sales platforms such as Artsy, which connects galleries and collectors through an extensive online marketplace, and Artnet, which provides auction data, market research and exhibition listings, already play a role in how works are discovered, researched, and evaluated online. While the core buying and selling of high-value works often still occurs offline through galleries and auction houses, these platforms show how digital tools can support transparency and access across different price points.

Digitization of provenance records

One of the most common entry points is the digitization of provenance documents. Receipts, proof of title, contracts, and correspondence are scanned and stored as electronic copies or PDFs. From a practical standpoint, digitization improves accessibility and reduces the risk of physical loss. The issue of digitization may appear benign, but it warrants closer scrutiny.

From a legal standpoint, digitization raises important questions. Are electronic copies legally valid? In Singapore, electronic records and signatures are generally recognized under the Electronic Transactions Act, and electronic evidence may be admissible under the Evidence Act, subject to requirements of authenticity and integrity. Nonetheless, a scanned document is only as reliable as the process used to create and store it. Questions may arise as to whether the document has been altered, whether it accurately reflects the original, and how its chain of custody is maintained.

These issues are magnified in cross-border transactions. Art frequently moves across jurisdictions, and foreign courts or counterparties may apply different rules when assessing the legal effect or evidentiary weight of electronic documents. A digitized provenance file that is acceptable in Singapore may not be treated the same way elsewhere. Collectors should therefore be cautious about assuming uniform legal recognition across borders.

Digital transactions and automated agreements

Technology also increasingly features in the transactional side of the art market. Online sales platforms, electronic contracts, and automated workflows are now commonplace. More ambitiously, some have explored the use of automated or "smart" contracts for the sale of art.

While these tools can improve efficiency, art transactions are rarely straightforward. They often involve representations and warranties as to authenticity and title, conditions precedent, regulatory considerations, and bespoke risk allocation. Encoding such nuances into automated agreements can be challenging. Moreover, questions of governing law, jurisdiction, and enforceability remain critical, particularly where parties, artworks, and payment mechanisms are located in different countries.

Technology may facilitate execution, but it does not eliminate the need for careful legal structuring and advice.

Blockchain as a tool to guarantee provenance and royalties

Blockchain technology has attracted significant attention as a solution for art provenance. By creating an immutable, time-stamped ledger of ownership and transactions, blockchain-based platforms aim to enhance transparency and trust. These platforms seek to provide a permanent digital record linked to an artwork.

However, blockchain is not foolproof. Its effectiveness depends on the accuracy of the information entered at the outset. If incorrect, incomplete, or fraudulent data is recorded, the blockchain merely preserves the problem in an immutable form. This "garbage in, garbage out" risk is particularly relevant in the art world, where attribution and ownership often depend on expert judgment rather than objective fact.

There are also practical and legal limitations. Much of what matters in provenance, be it physical inspection, expert opinions, or historical context, exists off-chain. Additionally, the blockchain's permanence can sit uneasily with legal realities, where records may need to be corrected or disputes resolved. Blockchain solutions may be more straightforward for newly-created works, where provenance begins at the point of creation and assurances on authenticity can be made personally by the artist, compared to legacy art with complex historical ownership. More fundamentally, there is a question about transparency and incentives within the art market itself. Even if provenance information can be securely recorded, that does not resolve whether artists, galleries, or collectors are prepared to make that information visible. Disclosure around pricing, prior ownership, or contractual arrangements may run counter to entrenched market practices that value discretion and control over information. For anyone building platforms in this space, this is not a purely technical issue. While technology can facilitate record-keeping, it does not, on its own, change behaviour. The effectiveness of any kind of system of establishing provenance ultimately depends on what participants are willing to disclose, standardize, and stand behind, particularly when commercial sensitivities, reputational risk, and legal exposure come into play.

Blockchain systems can be used to embed programmable agreements — commonly referred to as “smart contracts” — that automate how digital rights are managed and how revenues are distributed among contributors. In a creative context, these mechanisms allow revenue-sharing arrangements to be coded directly into the digital asset itself, rather than relying solely on traditional contractual arrangements that may be opaque or skewed in favour of intermediaries. For artists and creators, this offers a potential means of retaining greater control over how their works are monetized and how proceeds are allocated.

In theory, these arrangements also allow for more finely calibrated royalty structures, where artists receive an agreed share of revenue as value is realised over time. In jurisdictions such as Singapore, where there are no legislated artist resale right regime and no formal collective management organization for visual art, artists are typically paid only on primary sales. They typically would not participate in any economic upside when their works are resold on the secondary market. In contexts such as these, blockchain-based models do not create new rights as a matter of law, but they do provide a mechanism through which market participants can choose to behave differently. If stakeholders such as artists, galleries, collectors, and institutions take the view that artists should continue to benefit from secondary market value, it is open to them to agree on, and indeed invest in, technological frameworks that reflect and give effect to that shared position. 

For founders and business owners seeking to build platforms around these ideas, the legal concerns involve hard questions about how royalty entitlements should be framed as enforceable contractual obligations, how intellectual property in images, metadata and transaction records is owned and licensed across multiple users, how errors in attribution or ownership are dealt with when automated systems are relied upon, and how such private arrangements interact with existing regulatory regimes.

AI and authenticity verification

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly marketed as a tool for verifying authenticity or assisting with valuation, using image analysis, pattern recognition, and large datasets. In Singapore for example, where there may be a limited pool of recognized appraisers for certain categories of local and regional art, the temptation to rely on AI-driven solutions is understandable. In some cases, even trusted appraisers may begin offering AI-assisted services.

Yet AI introduces its own set of risks. Questions arise as to accuracy, training data, bias, and explainability. AI solutions for authentication are arguably most effective when significant data is available about an artist’s body of work. It may therefore be less helpful for the work of emerging or mid-career artists in smaller markets, or in markets where art scholarship is lacking.

Beyond the technology itself, the contractual framework governing the AI service provider is critical. What warranties, if any, are given in relation to the accuracy or reliability of the AI solution? Are there restrictions on what the AI report may be used for? Is liability excluded or capped?

For business owners building AI-based authentication platforms, these issues require early and deliberate legal choices. How AI outputs are positioned — as indicative analysis rather than definitive opinions — must be reflected consistently in user terms, reports, and marketing materials. Careful attention is also needed in relation to the provenance and licensing of platform training data, particularly where images or archival materials are protected by copyright or contract. Finally, platform operators need to think realistically about reliance and liability, including whether limitations of liability, insurance coverage, or human oversight mechanisms are appropriate where users may rely on AI outputs in high-value transactions.

Conclusion

For collectors, intermediaries, and institutions, the growing intersection between art and technology presents both opportunity and risk. With thoughtful planning and appropriate legal guidance, technology can help preserve value, improve marketability, and reduce uncertainty in provenance. The key is ensuring that innovation enhances the story behind an artwork rather than complicating it.

If you would like advice on managing provenance risk, structuring digital or cross-border art transactions, implementing blockchain or AI solutions, or addressing intellectual property and regulatory considerations in the art market, please reach out to our legal experts for tailored guidance.