Andrew Bruce writes for Citywealth magazine

Andrew Bruce has provided an Art Market Insight to Citywealth magazine which can be read here. 

Andrew commented: "As a barrister my 'feel' for the art market is not necessarily wholly up-to-date as I deal with disputes and their resolution and these often take years to come to fruition.  I would though comment that the hype around digital art and NFTs has moderated recently and a more realistic approach is being taken by artists, dealers and collectors to the tokenising of art.  For the auction market, geo-political and economic uncertainty seems to have been counter-balanced by the continued growth of the art markets in Asia and the Middle East which have seen new collectors and new artists come to the fore.  Ensuring authenticity and provenance continues to prove challenging and although the recent use of the Art Loss Register to secure the return of the painting "Children Wading" by Robert Gemmell Hutchinson to Glasgow Museums is encouraging there remain ongoing difficulties with stolen and looted art”.

Kuldip Singh KC and Andrew Bruce recently attended a fascinating seminar entitled "Contemporary perspectives on art restitution" hosted by Withers on 1 November 2023. Richard Aronowitz described the work of the Restitution Team at Christie's and explained how the auction houses sought to apply the 1998 Washington Principles in respect of Nazi-looted art. Alexander Herman of the Institute of Art and Law spoke about how museums were addressing claims in relation to cultural objects acquired by colonial powers and drew attention to the case of Attorney General v Trustees of the British Museum [2005] EWHC 1089, in which William Henderson appeared for the Attorney.