How can tech help win the battle against art crime? – a talk at TEFAF Maastricht

On Friday 14 March, to coincide with the opening of TEFAF in Maastricht, Edward Behrens chaired a discussion presented by ARTE Generali with Apollo at the Groote Sociëteit. The panellists were Dr Arianna Traviglia (Coordinator of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Technology at the Italian Institute of Technology), Tiziano Coiro (Coordinator at the Works of Art Unit of Interpol) and Jo Lawson-Tancred (author of AI and the Art Market).

Art crime affects more collectors than one might think. Forgery, theft and looting are well known, but art crime also includes less obvious practices, such as selling and buying works of art at auction to launder money. Nowadays, technological developments are changing the way that art crime is both combatted and perpetrated.

Coiro was clear that the role of Interpol might differ from the public’s assumptions about what the organisation does. It is largely there to support local forces’ investigations and share information – a role that has been vastly helped by technology. In 2021 Interpol launched its app, ID-Art, which allows users to identify stolen cultural property through the Interpol database. Its introduction, according to Coiro, has dramatically improved the success of investigations by enabling the public to communicate directly with Interpol.

For Traviglia, technology is vital in the work she does to trace objects that have been looted or discovered using metal detectors. When works are discovered in this fashion there is no record of them, so all understanding of the object must come from forensic analysis. These uncatalogued objects often give rise to forgeries, since the absence of authoritative guides makes it easier to fake a work. By applying forensic technologies, one can expose the forgeries and support the police who are trying to shut down criminal activity.

Increasingly, law enforcement is using artificial intelligence to assist with its investigations both of criminal networks and in detecting forgery. Yet as Lawson-Tancred pointed out, AI is only as good as the models it has been trained with, which makes it risky to rely on AI as the sole tool of discovery. Lawson-Tancred also raised a conversation she had had with a former FBI agent who suggested that the fastest growing area of forgeries is actually contemporary art. The proliferation of videos on social media that show how artists make their work offers criminals a virtual how-to-guide to creating fake works. What’s more, it is much easier for them to find the same materials that were used in the original work, as these are still being manufactured. Lawson-Tancred counselled everyone to think about contemporary works, rather than just Old Masters or classical artefacts, as potential forgeries.

Awareness is, of course, a vital aspect of protecting against crime. But if you really want to protect yourself, the advice of the panel was to use all the resources available. Make sure you study the provenance, use all the databases such as the Interpol app, and get the best advice you can.