
Provenance. It’s a lofty term you’ll often hear bandied about in the art world. Simply put, it’s the record of ownership of a work of art, from its creation by the artist’s hand to the present day. Think of it as a chain of custody for the art world. For many collectors, a piece’s provenance…

In recent years, there’s been a notable and promising trend of voluntary cultural property repatriations by museums, particularly in the United States. This isn’t primarily about Nazi-looted art or Native American human remains and other cultural items, which are separate categories. These cases rather focus on antiquities and other artifacts that are increasingly being returned…

There’s no question that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already having an impact on securing art collections, and museums of all sizes must devote time to exploring the technologies already on the market. Today, even medium-sized museums often have well over one hundred cameras in operation. Obviously, it’s impossible to monitor all of them at the…

The sky has turned an eerie shade of green, the kind that signals something ominous on the horizon. The winds are already howling outside your window, bending the palm trees to their breaking point. The local news station repeats its urgent warning—the hurricane has intensified to a Category 5 and is heading straight for your…

By Bill Anderson, Art Guard This article first appeared on the Art Guard blog, December 10, 2024 If diminished funding and smaller budgets aren’t enough to challenge the existence of many museums we were reminded of another glaring vulnerability. Smash-and-grab assaults occurred in two smaller French museums in the last several weeks. At the Cognacq-Jay…