Art Expert Witnesses

The art market involves high-value assets whose worth depends on authenticity, provenance, condition, and market perception, which makes disputes both financially significant and factually complex. Collectors, dealers, galleries, and auction houses litigate authenticity and attribution, title and provenance defects, consignment terms, and warranties made at sale. Lenders and insurers dispute the value of art held as collateral or covered under fine art policies, while estates and institutions contest valuations for tax, charitable, and transactional purposes. Designers, artists, and companies also litigate copyright, trade dress, and design infringement involving visual works, and the central question is typically what the object or design is, where it came from, and what it is worth.

An art expert helps counsel evaluate those questions with scholarship and market evidence. Authenticity and attribution analysis may draw on stylistic comparison, documentary provenance research, exhibition and catalogue history, and coordination with conservators on materials and technique. Appraisers can determine fair market value, replacement value, or diminution in value using comparable sales, auction results, and market trends appropriate to the relevant standard of value and effective date. Where industry practice is at issue, experts can explain customary terms and due diligence expectations for dealers, auction houses, and consignors, and in intellectual property matters, design professionals and art historians can assess originality and similarity. Those opinions support liability, damages, and rebuttal positions and allow counsel to challenge attributions or valuations resting on thin provenance or inapposite comparables.

Art disputes may turn on connoisseurship, provenance research, appraisal methodology, market practice, or design analysis, and an expert on American paintings may not be the right witness for Asian art, decorative glass, or public sculpture. Experts in our network have worked with organizations such as Christie's, the White House, the National Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of American Art, and they include appraisers of antiques, silver, and decorative arts who have testified on insurance claims and valuation. The network also includes decorative arts appraisers who have served as on-air appraisers for PBS's Antiques Roadshow, contemporary art specialists who have advised on record-setting auction results, Asian art historians, fine art insurance professionals, and industrial designers who have testified many times on design uniqueness and intellectual property. Round Table Group has completed more than 75,000 expert searches for litigators and brings that experience to finding the art specialist whose expertise fits the objects and issues in your case. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your art matter by calling us at (202) 908-4500.