Hephaestus Analytical, a London-based tech firm that authenticates artworks through the use of a mix of AI, provenance analysis, and superior chemical evaluation, has acquired scientific artwork evaluation agency ArtDiscovery.
ArtDiscovery’s pigment database, spectral libraries, and workforce of conservators will allow Hephaestus “to unlock new prospects in artwork authentication, making it extra exact, accessible, and impactful than ever,” the merged corporations’ CEO, Denis Moiseev, advised ARTnews.
He mentioned the merger will result in the “world’s highest evidentiary requirements in artwork authentication.”
Based in 2009, ArtDiscovery has labored with the FBI, Sotheby’s, museums, and artwork sellers to confirm artworks.
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“Becoming a member of Hephaestus seems like we’re catching up with the digital world,” Nica Gutman Rieppi, ArtDiscovery’s managing director, mentioned in a press release. “Working with Hephaestus doesn’t a lot alter our rigorous utility of scientific requirements because it accelerates them. We at the moment are in a position to analysis throughout our huge provenance, imaging and pigment libraries, conduct chemical analyses, and supply our clients with definitive solutions, all in much less time and with even better accuracy than earlier than.”
Hephaestus, which can be headquartered in New York, specializes within the Russian avant-garde, an umbrella time period for modernism that flourished in different Soviet nations throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moiseev demonstrated the corporate’s authentication know-how as a part of the 2024 BBC documentary The Zaks Affair: Anatomy of a Faux Assortment. He beforehand advised ARTnews that greater than 95 % of the Russian avant-garde work dropped at him are pretend.
“The market is so saturated with forgeries that it’s unattainable to not speak about it,” Moiseev mentioned. “We imagine our know-how can clear up the market. It’s a solvable downside. The problem is that there’s an adversarial element to the Russian avant-garde market—there are so-called specialists who’re authenticating or contributing to the authentication—of forgeries. There are individuals who say issues are actual and truly, they’re not. That is what makes this market so sophisticated, but it surely actually shouldn’t be.”
Hephaestus can be growing blockchain know-how to extend safety surrounding authentications and creating merchandise for artwork finance and securitization.
“Our dedication to eliminating forgery from the artwork markets led us to develop our proprietary AI protocols [Pictology] and blockchain-secured information,” Moiseev added. “When offered with the chance to combine this service with the decades-long analysis on pigments maintained by ArtDiscovery, we realized this was a win-win state of affairs for the artwork world. We’re redefining the usual of certainty for artwork collectors, galleries, museums, and even legislation enforcement worldwide.”