The past, the present, and the hopeful future of the most misunderstood piece of paper in the art world. by Alejandro E. Trimper Author's note. Let me put all the cards on the table before we start, because regular readers know that is where I like to put all my cards. There are people with law degrees, PhDs, laboratories, and decades inside artist foundations. I am not one of them. I have, however, spent about twenty years in the gallery and art advisory business, longer if we count the years I spent listening to my mother conduct deals before I understood what I was hearing. I have held a lot of paper, watched a lot of deals close, and watched some go up in smoke with that eerie silence that tells you everyone in the room has just learned something expensive. Lived experience does not replace scholarship, law, or science, but it notices things a classroom or back office can miss. This is lived experience informed by public records, not legal advice or a self-coronation. Except...
What a Certificate of Authenticity Should Actually Tell You A buyer’s guide to evaluating the document, the process behind it, and the right questions to ask before you buy. by Alejandro E Trimper Not long ago, in an essay on Collecting Keith Haring's subway drawings published in Incollect Magazine, I made what I thought was a passing observation: a Certificate of Authenticity should not be treated as proof simply because it uses the word "certificate" . That sentence did quiet work in my inbox. Collectors wrote asking what their own certificates were actually worth. Dealers wrote asking where I drew the line between seller documentation and authentication. Galleries wrote about how often serious documentation gets reduced to a single piece of paper. New buyers, more than anyone, asked the simplest and most important question of all: how do I know what I am holding? I'll preface this by saying YES, I know some of this will be repetitive. It's not because I like ...