About the Art Sanctions
We maintain a public record of cultural property linked to sanctioned individuals and entities. The database exists to help investigators, compliance teams, and cultural stewards act quickly on verified information.Mission
The art market remains one of the most opaque channels for sanctions evasion. High-value objects move across borders with minimal scrutiny, while ownership structures obscure sanctioned actors behind layers of intermediaries. This opacity enables illicit transactions and undermines international enforcement efforts.Art Sanctions consolidates sanctions intelligence, provenance documentation, and ownership networks into a unified, publicly accessible database. By linking cultural property to sanctioned individuals and entities, we create verifiable records that persist across jurisdictions and reveal hidden connections.Our work equips compliance officers, investigative journalists, cultural institutions, and law enforcement with actionable evidence. Operating globally through cross-border collaboration and verified sourcing, we aim to make Art Sanctions a standard checkpoint before any high-value object is moved, insured, or pledged as collateral.
Why This Information Matters
Transparency for high-value transactions
The art market remains one of the least regulated industries with multi-million dollar transactions susceptible to illicit activities. Our database provides a verifiable trail that compliance and procurement teams as well as third-party investigators can trust.Regulatory compliance
Financial institutions, auction houses, and galleries face penalties for sanctioned dealings. Individuals, including art dealers and storage facility operators are at risk of serious criminal penalties for violating sanctions. The database safeguards reputations and surfaces relationships before they turn into violations.Evidence for reporting
Investigative journalists rely on provenance chains to expose hidden assets, shell companies, and sanctions evasion tactics.How We Operate
Evidence-first
Every record is tied to primary or secondary documentation — official sanctions notices, filings, sale archives, or peer-reviewed scholarship.Multilingual coverage
Names appear in English, Russian, and Ukrainian sources. We normalize transliterations and aliases to keep related entities connected.Open and free
The core database is free and open to the public. No paywalls or account requirements for browsing sanctioned holdings or provenance histories.Continuously updated
Government shared sanctions lists sync within 24 hours of publication. Provenance data and relationship graphs undergo quarterly curation.Team and Stewardship
The database is maintained by a multidisciplinary team of provenance researchers, sanctions analysts, and engineers. Core contributors have backgrounds in cultural heritage, investigative journalism, and anti-financial-crime programs.We work with a distributed network of subject-matter experts who peer review ownership chains and submit public corrections. Major data additions are documented in change logs so downstream users can reference provenance updates.
Funding and Independence
The Art Sanctions program operates as an independent, non-profit initiative. We do not accept funding from dealers, auction houses, or beneficiaries of cultural property trading.Support comes from foundations focused on transparency and anti-financial crime. Major grants and in-kind partnerships are disclosed in our annual report.