A single register for everything in the ecosystem that has an identity worth
keeping: works, collections, documents, certificates, exhibitions, venues and
the institutions behind them. Registering something gives it a permanent
identifier of its own, which stays with it no matter how it is retitled or who
comes to own it.
The register itself is being built. It already keeps each entry under its own
identifier, records who it belongs to, and keeps every earlier version of an
entry when it changes. The pages where you register and look after your own
works are not open yet.
Anyone whose works need to be traceable. Artists registering what they have
made, collectors and galleries recording what has passed through their hands,
and institutions that need a work's history to hold up under scrutiny.
Planned: registering a work and keeping it identifiable. The identifier does
not depend on the title or the maker's name, so a work stays the same work
through a reattribution or a change of title.
Planned: seeing the history rather than an overwritten page. Every change
is kept. What something was recorded as last year remains visible alongside
what it is recorded as now, so provenance can be followed rather than merely
asserted.
Planned: seeing what has been verified. On ARTup a fact counts as verified
only through a paid self-declaration or a paid time stamp of the document (today
the time stamp is not yet recorded on a blockchain). The register will show which entries carry that kind of proof and
which have only been declared.
Art Coefficient certificates already exist. Separately from the register,
you can already certify your Art Coefficient. The certificate holds the value
frozen at the moment of payment, and does not change when your record changes.
See "The Art Coefficient and What Your Score Means".
Planned: holding a certificate that can be checked independently. A
registered work will be able to carry a certificate that does not rely on ARTup
being available to be checked, and that records ownership as it changes hands.
Planned: confirming what is done in your name. Actions that alter ownership
will need your own confirmation before they take effect, so nothing moves
without the person it belongs to agreeing to it.
A work whose history travels with it. When it is sold, lent, exhibited or
inherited, the record of what it is and where it has been does not depend on
somebody having kept the right folder.