Art Legacy Institute: Copyright, fraud, forgery and more!

For two decades, Ronnie Walker and Dave Bass served on the FBI’s elite Art Crime Team, pursuing some of the world’s most sophisticated art crimes and cultural property investigations. Drawing on firsthand experiences from the art world’s underground, they will share never-before-heard stories involving the theft of priceless works of art and cultural artifacts, and provide rare insight into how the FBI investigates fraud, forgery, and deception within the global art market.

Through these extraordinary cases, Walker and Bass will explore how their experiences exposed the urgent need for better tools to protect artists, provenance, and artistic legacy. They will discuss how those investigations ultimately led to the creation of the Art Legacy Institute and the development of a new artist-centered approach focused on the democratization of the artist’s catalog — empowering artists to document, preserve, and control their own legacy before others define it for them.

The presentation will also address one of the most urgent emerging challenges facing artists today: artificial intelligence and the unauthorized use of creative works. The Art Legacy Institute is exploring practical ways to help artists strengthen documentation, provenance, and certain aspects of copyright protection, while collaborating with innovative technology companies to bring new tools and resources directly into the hands of artists and their studios.

Attendees will receive a preview and live demonstration of the Art Legacy Institute’s emerging technology platform, currently under development, which is designed to help artists safeguard their work, strengthen provenance records, and preserve their artistic legacy for future generations.