Art and law: artworks, collections, museums

Global art sales reached an estimated USD 57.5 billion in 2024 (Art Basel & UBS Global Art Market Report 2025). The market is deeply international – the United States, the United Kingdom, and China together account for the majority of sales by value – yet there is no unified international regulatory framework. Transactions can span multiple legal systems simultaneously, each with different rules on tax, export, intellectual property, and anti-money laundering compliance.

Regulators worldwide are stepping up. The EU's 2024 Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR) extended formal AML obligations to galleries, dealers, and auction houses for the first time. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published a landmark report in 2023 highlighting systemic vulnerabilities in the art market – from inadequate due diligence to the money laundering risks associated with NFTs. Cross-border restitution claims, shifting trade policy, and unresolved questions around AI-generated art and digital assets are reshaping the legal environment in real time.

Navigating this complexity requires more than a single discipline. It requires legal teams who understand how intellectual property, tax, customs, public law, and dispute resolution interact across jurisdictions – and who can deploy that knowledge on behalf of every type of actor in the art world.

CMS supports a diverse international clientele across the art sector – including private collectors, galleries, auction houses, and cultural institutions – via its specialised Art Group, a dedicated pillar within the broader Private Client practice. This brings together lawyers from across the firm's practice areas under a single coordinated team, ensuring that advice on an art-related matter draws on the right expertise at every stage, without the client having to manage multiple advisers separately.

In practice, this integration matters. A collector planning to donate a work to a public institution needs tax advice, an understanding of export controls, and a grasp of the institution's governance and public procurement obligations – simultaneously. An artist establishing a foundation needs IP protection, succession planning, and a compliance framework for patronage activity. A gallery facing a provenance dispute may require civil litigation, criminal law expertise, and engagement with public authorities in multiple countries, all in parallel.

Our team brings together this depth of expertise, combined with an international network spanning more than 40 countries. We are as at home advising on a major restitution claim involving several European states as we are structuring a private collection for the next generation. Our approach is practical, joined-up, and tailored to the specific dynamics of the art world.