[yarrel]

Unsurprisingly, catalogues raisonnes are a hotbed of legal activity and controversy. Many scholars will now not offer opinions on the authenticity of a work for fear of getting sued:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/arts/design/art-scholars-...

And works with supposedly excellent provenance still end up being repudiated by authentication committees:

https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2011/double-denied...

Due to the misaligned incentives in the art authentication world, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that a blockchain would be a good way of tracking records in the artworld, particularly if artists register works directly on it.

[nosuchthing]

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vi...

  By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain", 
  Verisart will hand wavy magic increase the trust in 
  art dealers and reduce fraud.


  That's a pretty neat idea. A distributed public ledger of 
  who I have sold my art to. And, if they sell it, they have 
  a cryptographically signed certificate proving its 
  provenance. The seller can sign the certificate with their 
  private key to say they've sold it to the new owner of a 
  specific public key. Nifty!


  Except… and I hate to bring the art industry into 
  disrepute… what if I sell a fake and keep the original in 
  my Underground Vault?


  There's no way to permanently attach a digital certificate 
  to a physical work of art.

  Incidentally, this is the problem with all the startups 
  claiming the blockchain will revolutionise the integrity 
  of global logistics markets. Sure, you can slap a QR code 
  on a crate - but nothing stops an unscrupulous middle-man 
  from replacing or adulterating the contents of the crate.

  Let's get back to Verisart's other issue. Proving that I 
  am the creator or owner of a piece of artwork.


  Long story short, I convinced them that I painted the Mona 
  Lisa.