Art & Law Workshop: Catalogue Raisonnés & Legacy Stewardship for the Future
November 10, 2026
RSVP
Overview
A catalogue raisonné is one of the most important tools for protecting an artist’s legacy. As the authoritative record of an artist’s body of work, it supports scholarship, authentication, and the art market, and it helps safeguard an artist’s reputation for generations.
Traditionally, these catalogues were printed volumes, which began to go out of date the moment they were published. Digital catalogues change that: they can be updated as new works surface, attributions are revised, and provenance research advances. Panopticon set a benchmark for this shift with its outstanding work moving Paul Cézanne’s catalogue raisonné from print to a digital format. That work is now carried forward by the recently formed Foundation for Artist Catalogues.
Join the Center for Art Law and our guest speakers, Dean Lentz and Bill Braine of the Foundation for Artist Catalogues, for a workshop on digital catalogue raisonnés and their role in legacy stewardship. The workshop will offer practical guidance on approaching the record-keeping process, whether you are a practicing artist planning your own legacy or managing the estate of another artist.
Moderated by Irina Tarsis, attorney and founding director of the Center for Art Law, the discussion will explore why catalogue raisonnés matter for legacy planning, how they are developed and maintained, and what changes when these records move into digital form.
About the Speakers:
Dean Lentz
Executive Director for Foundation for Artist Catalogues
Bill Braine
Director of Community Engagement for Foundation for Artist Catalogues
Irina Tarsis
Founder and Managing Director for the Center for Art Law
