Notes on finding, buying and living with art, from the gallery.
Special edition · November 2026This guide belongs to the November special edition: certificates, provenance, resale and care.See the edition
Why a gallery asks who you are
Being asked for an ID when you buy a work can feel strange. It is the law in many countries, it protects you as much as anyone, and done well it takes a few minutes.
ByErick González
You choose a work, you are ready to pay, and the gallery asks for your name, an ID, perhaps where the money comes from. It can feel like suspicion. It is not. It is the same care a notary or a bank takes, and it exists so that art cannot be used to hide money that came from somewhere else.
What the law asks, in a sentence
Anti-money-laundering rules ask businesses that handle valuable things to know who they deal with, to keep records, and to report what looks wrong to the authorities. In many places the art trade is one of those businesses. As of November 2026, a few public examples:
Mexico’s federal anti-money-laundering law lists the trade in works of art among its “vulnerable activities”.
The European Union brought art traders under its anti-money-laundering rules in 2018, and the United Kingdom in 2020.
Each country sets its own amounts, documents and deadlines, and they change. This is not legal advice: a professional where you live will tell you what applies to you.
What a gallery may ask you
Your full name and an official ID.
An address, and sometimes a tax number for the invoice.
For a company or a family office, who is ultimately behind it.
Now and then, where the funds come from.
Why it protects you
A sale with its identities and payments in order is a clean link in the work’s provenance. Years later, when you lend, insure or sell the work, that clean link is worth more than you think.
How we do it
We check what the law of the buyer’s country asks, quietly, as part of the purchase. Your documents are kept privately, apart from the site, and never shown with the work. Signatures on our certificates can also ask for an identity check, so a name is backed by a person. See how a certificate keeps your privacy.
A question we hear
Will my name appear anywhere?
No. The public page of a certificate shows the work, the artist and its stamps, never the owner.
If you would like company
This is what we do every day from Mexico City: help people find, buy and live with original contemporary art, with its papers in order. Book a free 30-minute call, or look at how our certificates work.
This content is for information and education only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal or tax advice.
Keep reading
- Caring for a work, and for its papers
A work asks for little: steady air, kind light, gentle hands. Its papers ask for even less: one place, one copy elsewhere. A Sunday-morning checklist for both.
- Living with a work on paper
Drawings, prints and photographs are the gentlest way into collecting and the most sensitive to a careless wall. Light, glass, the mount and the frame, in plain words.