& hardworking people who really care about their jobs work there. It is just not enough. Due diligence cannot be one sided, and by nature it cannot be taken for granted.

Auction houses have no incentive to change things that might potentially make their own lives harder, most people say. Surely that's not the way, because by that principle, auction houses didn’t have to create restitution departments & research teams either, but they have,

the response to each request has been the same, to reach out to 'legal'. How does the legal department decide which information should be withheld for 50, 70 or 100years? Is that not an indication of fear of the ‘uncertain’ outcome in itself?

The vast majority of those who answered, believed that the suggestions were doable. 
I have personally reached out multiple times for provenance information in the past, be it for routine due diligence or for artworks I knew for a fact to have been looted, &

Earlier this year I posted a questionnaire, offering some ideas as to how we could facilitate access to provenance information, which ranged from suggesting that researchers sign an NDAs,to having to share relevant findings with the supplier of the information, therefore enriching their IP holdings.

without any other identifiers, such as birth date, address, phone nr, IP address, etc is not a breach per se. Even if you have the name you still need to comb through all the other individuals by the same name, in hopes for identifying the one you are looking for.

every request for information to ‘legal’, maybe we can look for new ways of interpretation. GDPR itself does not provide a definitive list of what is personal data. For example, under various considerations, disclosing a name on its own, in isolation,

who would have to adhere to the same privacy & confidentiality laws in turn, for the specific purpose of carrying out due diligence are two very different scenarios. Instead of using fixed language & putting everything down to GDPR, privacy laws & having to refer

can be narrowed down to a very small group. Obviously, we are not asking that this type of information be published online on auction websites. I think we can agree that sharing information online & sharing information with specific individuals,