INTRODUCTION Contributed by: Fiorella Federica Alvino and Andrea Alberto Belloli, Nunziante Magrone
Art and the Law in 2026: Navigating a Market in Transition The global art market enters 2026 in a period of mean - ingful recalibration. According to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2025, total sales in 2024 reached an estimated USD57.5 billion. For legal practitioners, a market in transition is a mar - ket where there is heightened legal activity. Contested valuations, renegotiated consignment terms, cross- border disputes and the restructuring of commercial relationships all generate legal work. At the same time, the art market’s increasing professionalisation – driven by regulatory expansion, rising compliance standards and growing institutional scrutiny – is reshaping the role of specialist counsel. Lawyers advising art market participants must now combine deep technical knowl - edge with an understanding of market dynamics, geo - political risk and technological change. This guide is intended as a practical resource for that purpose. A mosaic of legal frameworks One of the defining characteristics of art law as a discipline is the absence of a single, unified global framework. Each of the jurisdictions covered in this guide has developed its own regulatory approach, shaped by constitutional tradition, historical experi - ence and policy priorities. Civil law countries tend to offer artists strong statutory protections, including inalienable moral rights and mandatory resale roy - alties, while common law jurisdictions have histori - cally relied more heavily on freedom of contract and market-driven solutions. This divergence has direct practical consequences: a cross-border transaction may simultaneously engage the mandatory rules of multiple legal systems, making multi-jurisdictional legal advice not merely useful but essential. At the international level, the 1970 UNESCO Con - vention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the 1995 UNIDROIT Conven - tion on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects provide the principal normative anchors. Both have achieved wide ratification, but implementation varies significantly between signatory states and enforce - ment remains patchy. Within the European Union, harmonisation has progressed further, particularly in
the fields of artists’ resale rights, export licensing and anti-money laundering obligations. The December 2024 full entry into force of the Markets in Crypto- Assets Regulation (MiCA) has added a further layer of EU-wide regulation relevant to the digital art sec - tor. Practitioners advising across jurisdictions must remain alert to this evolving mosaic. The rights of the creator A central theme of this guide is the legal framework protecting the rights of artists. In most jurisdictions examined, these rights take two principal forms. Moral rights safeguard the personal and reputational bond between creator and work: typically encompassing the right of attribution and the right of integrity, they are generally inalienable and survive the artist’s death, enforceable by heirs or designated representatives. Economic rights, by contrast, grant exclusive control over the commercial exploitation of the artwork and are transferable and time-limited. The scope of both categories varies considerably between jurisdictions, creating friction in international transactions where the applicable law may be disputed or unclear. The resale right – entitling artists or their heirs to a percentage of the proceeds each time a work is resold through a professional intermediary – remains a point of regulatory asymmetry between major art markets. Harmonised across the EU under Directive 2001/84/ EC, it has no equivalent in the United States and oper - ates under varying rules in other jurisdictions covered by this guide. This disparity continues to generate debate about market competitiveness and the equi - table sharing of appreciation between creators and the secondary market. The legal status of photographs as artistic works also warrants specific attention. Across jurisdictions, the distinction between photographs protected as original creative works – attracting full copyright protection for the life of the author plus 70 years – and simple photographs attracting lesser or no protection turns on the presence of genuine creative expression: origi - nality of composition, lighting, perspective and artis - tic vision. As photographic images proliferate across digital platforms, the question of when and how they are protected, and what authorisation is required for their reproduction and commercial use, has become
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