Provenance disputes

The law protects both the dispossessed owner and the good-faith buyer. The balance varies from country to country: some protect the buyer after a certain period, others maintain the original owner's right. The tribunal determines the applicable law and then examines the facts.

Beyond the law, the arbitrators pay attention to equity and to international principles on the restitution of spoliated property. Negotiated solutions are frequent: compensation, sharing, restitution coupled with compensation.

Most of these disputes are decided on historical evidence: inventories, invoices, correspondence, old photographs, sale catalogues, insurance documents, files of past restitutions. The tribunal may appoint a historian or archivist to reconstruct the chain of ownership.

The research takes time: the average duration reaches fourteen months. The parties are well advised to put their file together very early and to request protective measures if the work risks being sold.

Provenance disputes touch on personal and collective history: spoliation, war, colonisation. The tribunal ensures respectful treatment, avoids needlessly hurtful debates and, where possible, favours an amicable settlement.

The parties may request a reinforced closed-door hearing and the appointment of an arbitrator or mediator familiar with these issues.

Provenance disputes overlap with the mission of the Protection department: BIOP database, provenance research, restitutions. The tribunal may, with the parties' agreement, query the database to check whether a work has been reported.

Parties holding a work of uncertain provenance are well advised to carry out a prior search: it may avoid a dispute or, on the contrary, open the way to an amicable solution.