Art law
Anyone who works with art works with value. A painting or sculpture represents money. A collection also carries cultural significance, a museum has a reputation to protect, and for an artist there is the legacy the work leaves behind. A good lock on the door does not protect that value. For that you need legal advice from someone who knows the art world.
Art law is not a clearly demarcated area of law in the classic sense, but a crossroads of copyright, contract law, property law, heritage law and administrative law. A gallery owner drawing up a consignment agreement is right in the middle of contract law. For a museum that wants to sell items from its collection, the Heritage Act (Erfgoedwet) and the LAMO apply, while the resale right sits in the Copyright Act. And if a collector buys a work at auction that later turns out not to be authentic, mistake (dwaling) and non-conformity come into play.
Liaise Advocaten specialises in art law and advises museums, galleries, art dealers, auction houses, collectors and artists on loans, the purchase and sale of artworks, the Heritage Act and collection management.
Jaap Versteeg has worked for clients in the art world for many years. Among them museums and art collections, galleries and art dealers, auction houses and individual artists. He advises on the law, and just as readily on the commercial and strategic side. He has also held supervisory positions at cultural festivals and orchestras and is a member of the Association for Art, Culture and Law (Vereniging voor Kunst, Cultuur en Recht).
Would you like to know where you stand legally? Call 020 675 88 21 or email Jaap Versteeg for an initial consultation.
Legal advice for museums: collection management, loans and governance
Museums keep our cultural heritage. A substantial list of legal obligations comes with that task.
Take lending itself. Museums constantly lend works to one another, to and from private collections, and increasingly across borders too. For every loan you record arrangements on insurance, transport, liability for damage and the duration of the loan. Usually that means nail-to-nail insurance, which covers the artwork from the moment it comes off the wall at the lender until the moment it hangs back in place. For valuable works and international exhibitions those premiums run high. The Indemnity Scheme for Museum Loans (Indemniteitsregeling museale bruiklenen) then offers a solution in some cases, because the State takes on part of the risk. Not every loan qualifies and the conditions are strict.
Then there is collection management. Museums registered with the Netherlands Museum Register (Museumregister Nederland) must endorse the Ethical Code for Museums and keep an up-to-date collection plan. If a museum wants to dispose of objects from its collection, the Guideline for the Disposal of Museum Objects (Leidraad Afstoting Museale Objecten, LAMO) prescribes a careful procedure. It starts with internal selection, runs through publication on the Disposals Database (Afstotingsdatabase, ADB) and assessment by an independent committee, and ends with the actual transfer. If the museum is owned by a municipality, province or other public authority, the disposal procedure under the Heritage Act also applies. That procedure is mandatory. If you do not follow it correctly, it can lead to loss of museum registration and of membership of the Museums Association (Museumvereniging), with all the consequences that entails for the Museumkaart and for future subsidy applications.
Museums must also comply with the Governance Code Cultuur, which sets out guidelines for governance and supervision. In recent years many museums have moved to a supervisory board model (raad-van-toezichtmodel, RvT model). That transition brings questions about articles of association, the division of powers and the liability of directors and supervisors. Jaap knows these questions from his own experience as a supervisor at cultural institutions too.
Since 2025 the Fair Practice Code has played an ever greater role. Compliance with this code is now a condition for BIS subsidies and the national cultural funds. That directly affects the contracts museums enter into with freelance curators, restorers, exhibition designers and other self-employed professionals.
More about legal advice for museums →
A lawyer for the purchase and sale of artworks
In the art trade, large sums change hands, often on the basis of very little paperwork. Which works, right up until it doesn’t. Whether you are a gallery owner selling a work, a collector bidding at auction or an art dealer operating internationally, you need sound contractual arrangements in every case.
The purchase and sale of artworks raise legal questions you do not come across in other sectors. Authenticity is the most important one. Suppose the work you bought as a genuine Mondrian turns out to be of doubtful provenance. Or the panel on which a seventeenth-century work is painted turns out, on closer examination, to date from the nineteenth century. What the legal consequences are depends on what buyer and seller knew, what guarantees the seller gave, whether an expert examination took place and what the contract says about authenticity.
The ownership history of an artwork, its provenance, is legally relevant too. Especially for works that changed hands shortly before or during the Second World War, provenance can be a legal minefield. The Restitutions Committee (Restitutiecommissie) assesses claims to artworks that may have been lost involuntarily as a result of the Nazi regime. But even outside the context of looted art, an unclear provenance can lead to disputes, for example where there has been illegal import or export of cultural goods.
The resale right can also play a part in any resale. Visual artists and their heirs are entitled, on every resale of their work (as long as the artist died less than 70 years ago), to a percentage of the sale price, provided a professional art dealer is involved and the sale price is at least €3,000. The right is set out in the Copyright Act and cannot be waived. As an art dealer, you cannot exclude it in your standard terms or in the contract.
Jaap draws up purchase agreements, reviews them, and assists clients when disputes arise over authenticity, provenance or the resale right. He knows the trading practices of the art market and knows how to make arrangements that hold up in a sector like this.
More about buying and selling artworks →
More about provenance research and restitution →
More about the artist’s resale right →
Loan agreement: legal advice for exhibitions
Behind every exhibition lies a legal operation. For each work you borrow, you draw up a loan agreement that sets out the rights and obligations of both parties.
In the museum world, nail-to-nail insurance is the standard. That all-risk policy covers the artwork from the moment it is removed at the lender’s location until the moment it hangs back in place, transport included. “All risk” does not mean everything is covered, though. Every policy contains exclusions and limitations. If a work slowly discolours during an exhibition because of exposure to light, the question is whether the policy compensates the loss of value or only the restoration costs. And with a unique work that loss of value is hard to establish.
With international exhibitions it becomes more complicated still. Works travel through several countries, each with its own rules on import, export and protection of ownership. A work that is temporarily in the Netherlands can be seized. The years-long legal battle over the Crimean treasures at the Allard Pierson is a painful example. Works that had been lent from Ukraine ended up, because of the Russian annexation of Crimea, in an ownership dispute that was fought out before the Dutch courts. Lenders want as much certainty as possible that nothing like that happens, while borrowers do not want to be liable for risks beyond their control. You can only resolve that tension with careful contractual arrangements.
Some museums stipulate in a loan that the lender may not resell the work immediately afterwards. That restriction can last a few months, but also several years. For lenders who actively manage their collection, that is a negotiating point you should not overlook.
The fact that a work is on display does not mean you may communicate about it freely. The exhibition itself is in most cases allowed without the artist’s permission. But as soon as you include the work in a catalogue, put it on the museum website or share it on Instagram, you usually need permission, unless the work already belongs to the public domain. That distinction is regularly missed in practice.
More about the loan agreement →
Heritage Act and collection management: disposal and the LAMO procedure
Managing a museum collection goes further than guarding physical objects, since a legal responsibility comes with it. Museums document and conserve their collection professionally and make it accessible. If they decide to dispose of objects, strict procedures apply.
The Guideline for the Disposal of Museum Objects (LAMO) is the museum sector’s self-regulatory instrument. The most recent version dates from 2023 and describes in four steps how a museum arrives at responsible disposal. The museum first carries out internal research and makes a selection, then notifies the intended disposal on the Disposals Database, has an independent committee assess it, and only then proceeds to transfer or sale.
But the LAMO is not a statute. The Heritage Act is. And it prescribes its own disposal procedure when it comes to cultural goods held by public authorities or bodies governed by public law. That procedure is mandatory. If you do not observe it, you risk intervention by the Inspectorate for Government Information and Heritage. Jaap guides museums through the interaction between these two regimes, which regularly causes confusion in practice.
More about collection management and the Heritage Act →
Legal advice for galleries and the art trade
Gallery owners and art dealers work with specific types of contract that are less common in other industries. The consignment agreement is one of them. The artist or owner leaves a work with the gallery on consignment, for sale. Ownership remains with the person who brought it in; the gallery acts as intermediary and receives a commission on sale. That sounds straightforward, but there are legal risks gallery owners often overlook. If the gallery goes bankrupt while works are held on consignment, the ownership question suddenly becomes urgent. Damage to a work, and lending it out without the consignor’s permission, are matters you want to settle in advance as well.
The relationship between gallery and artist has its own dynamics too. Many galleries work with exclusive representation contracts. You negotiate the scope of that exclusivity, and equally the term, the commission structure and the termination arrangement. Record those points carefully.
Gallery owners selling online are bound by consumer law like anyone else. The rules on distance selling apply to a painting in a webshop too. You have an information obligation, the buyer has a right of withdrawal, and the law sets specific requirements for the way the purchase agreement comes about. Jaap helps gallery owners and art dealers draw up contracts and general terms, and assists them when a dispute arises.
More about legal advice for galleries and the art trade →
More about artist contracts with a gallery →
Copyright in the art world: reproduction, resale right and licences
Copyright plays a part in the art world in more places than you would expect. A visual artist automatically has copyright in their own work. That right arises at the moment of creation and does not have to be registered. It gives the artist the exclusive right (subject to a few exceptions laid down in law) to determine who may reproduce, communicate to the public or adapt the work.
In practice it usually comes down to the question of what you may do with an artwork you have bought. Ownership of the physical work passes to the buyer, but copyright stays with the artist (or with their heirs, up to seventy years after death). Exhibiting a work is allowed. For a poster, the catalogue, the website or social media you usually need permission from the rights holder, or a licence through Pictoright for example. That applies even if the work has hung in the collection for decades.
Seventy years after the artist’s death, you may freely reproduce a work. With a painting by Rembrandt or a sculpture by Rodin, that question no longer arises. A photograph of that painting may well be protected, if the photographer made creative choices in taking it. The protection then lies in the photographic interpretation, not in the painting itself. And even the restoration of a work may, in certain circumstances, be regarded as a new copyright-protected work.
Alongside copyright the maker keeps moral rights. Those govern what an owner may do to the work, and they bite hardest on work that stands outdoors.
The resale right, discussed above, sits in the Copyright Act but is really an independent right linked to copyright. You do not come across anything quite like it in other sectors.
More about the moral rights of the artist →
More about art in public space →
Who does Jaap work for?
Jaap Versteeg assists a wide range of clients in the art world. A selection from his practice:
Museums and art collections. Jaap guides loan agreements between museums and art collections, advises on collection management and disposal, and litigates over artworks when disputes arise about ownership, authenticity or provenance.
Galleries and art dealers. Jaap draws up consignment agreements and exclusive representation contracts and assists galleries in disputes over sale, damage or non-conformity.
Auction houses. Advice on the legal position of the auction house as intermediary, on the general terms and on liability regarding authenticity.
Artists. Jaap guides visual artists through contract negotiations with galleries, questions about the resale right and disputes over reproduction rights.
Collectors. On acquisitions, on structuring a collection and on gifts and estates.
Cultural institutions. Foundations, funds and other organisations in the cultural sector that need advice on governance, subsidy conditions and employment relationships.
Feel free to get in touch. We are always happy to talk your situation through first.
All practice areas
