Frequently Asked Questions

01

What is Always Art?

Always Art is shared digital infrastructure for the art world. It is designed to preserve continuity, provenance, and long term relationships around artworks as they move through time, people, and institutions.

It is not a marketplace, not a SaaS product in the traditional sense, and not a platform built to sit between participants and extract value from their relationships.

02

What problem does Always Art solve?

Most art systems are good at managing the present moment and bad at preserving context over time.

Records fracture as artworks move between galleries, fairs, collectors, estates, institutions, and platforms. Data is recreated, emailed, flattened, or lost. Relationships remain human, but the record that supports them does not travel.

Always Art is built so the artwork remains legible over decades even as businesses, people, tools, and roles change.

03

What is the Universal Art Record?

The Universal Art Record is a living record that follows an artwork across its entire life. That includes creation, exhibitions, sales, ownership changes, storage, and contextual history.

It is designed to outlast any single company, interface, or business model. The record evolves as new stewards contribute context, rather than being recreated each time the work moves.

04

Who owns the artwork record?

No single party owns the record.

Always Art does not own it and cannot take it away. The record is stewarded by the people and institutions connected to the artwork over time. This is intentional. Ownership or paywalls would break neutrality, trust, and long term continuity.

Always Art's role is stewardship, not control.

05

Is Always Art a SaaS company?

No.

Some of the tools look like SaaS, but the incentives are different. SaaS companies sell access to software. If you stop paying, you lose the tool, the data, or both. Lock in is the business model.

Always Art is infrastructure first. The product is the continuity of the record, not the interface. The tools exist to make the infrastructure usable. You can use them or not. You can export data. The system is designed to remain useful even if Always Art no longer existed.

If a label is required, the most accurate one is free shared infrastructure with optional services layered on top.

06

Why is Always Art free?

Because monetizing access would break neutrality and permanence.

Most free tools are free until they are not. They are growth tactics or land grabs. Always Art is free at the foundation level by design. You cannot charge rent on shared infrastructure and still claim it is shared.

Revenue only exists above the foundation layer through optional services such as efficiency tools, analytics, services, or transaction support. None of those affect access to the record or participation in the ecosystem.

07

How is Always Art different from Artlogic or Arternal?

Artlogic and similar systems help galleries manage their business today. They are internal systems. The artwork record exists only inside the gallery account and only as long as the subscription exists.

Always Art is designed for what happens beyond the gallery boundary.

An artwork record is created once and continues across fairs, collectors, secondary sales, estates, and institutions without being recreated or flattened. A fair can use the record without seeing gallery contacts. A collector can save the work without accessing pricing. An artist can see exhibition history without becoming a sales channel.

Everyone operates independently. The record stays intact.

08

How is Always Art different from Artsy?

Artsy is a marketplace and media platform. Its role is to aggregate inventory and attention, drive discovery, and monetize visibility, transactions, and data. To do that, it must sit between galleries and collectors and own the primary interface where those relationships form.

Always Art is not a marketplace and does not aggregate demand. It does not sell visibility, traffic, or access to collectors.

With Artsy, artwork records and engagement live inside Artsy's ecosystem. If a gallery leaves, that context does not travel.

With Always Art, the artwork record exists independently of any single interface. Galleries, collectors, fairs, and institutions interact with the same record while retaining control of their data and relationships.

Artsy helps people find art.
Always Art helps art and its context survive over time.

09

Does Always Art replace my existing system?

It can, but it does not require you to rip anything out.

Most galleries and organizations run Always Art in parallel at first. They may use it for fairs, collector engagement, or long term tracking while keeping their existing system for internal operations.

There is no financial pressure to fully migrate. The foundation is free. Adoption can happen at your own pace.

10

Is switching costly?

Yes. Switching is costly. Anyone who says otherwise is selling.

The difference is when and how you pay that cost.

Traditional systems defer the cost. It shows up later when records fracture across fairs, staff changes, estates, or secondary sales.

Always Art concentrates the effort into a one time investment in continuity. Once the record exists, it travels. Even if you stop using Always Art's tools, the record and its connections remain usable and exportable.

11

Who should use Always Art now?

Always Art is most valuable for people already experiencing record fragmentation. That includes galleries doing fairs, artists with long exhibition histories, collectors managing growing collections, estates, and institutions.

If you are early stage, single location, or not yet feeling that pain, switching may not be worth it today.

Always Art is not trying to convince everyone. It exists for the moment when continuity becomes necessary rather than theoretical.

12

How does Always Art handle privacy and control?

Privacy is role based and contextual.

Each participant controls what they see and what they share. A fair does not see gallery contacts. Collectors do not see pricing unless shared. Artists are not forced into sales roles.

Independence is preserved while the record remains connected.

13

What happens if Always Art disappears?

The system is designed so that the record and data remain usable and exportable.

The goal is not dependency. The goal is continuity. Always Art is built so the ecosystem does not collapse if a single company fails.

14

What is Always Art trying to become?

Always Art is not trying to own the art world.

It is trying to provide a neutral, permanent layer that the art world can rely on regardless of which tools, platforms, or marketplaces are popular at any given moment.

If it succeeds, it becomes boring, stable, and trusted. That is the point.

15

Is Always Art really free?

Yes.
The foundational tools are free for artists, galleries, collectors, fairs, institutions, and estates.

These are not trials or limited versions. They include everything required to perform your role professionally and participate in the ecosystem. Access does not expire.

Revenue comes only from optional services layered on top of the foundation. They are not required to participate, not designed for everyone, and never pushed.

16

What's the catch?

There isn't one.

The art world needs shared infrastructure that does not disappear when a subscription ends or access is restricted. Charging for access creates fragility. Records vanish. Relationships break.

Always Art exists to prevent that.

17

How is this different from other gallery and collection systems?

Most systems lead with tools.
Always Art leads with relationships.

Traditional platforms ask galleries to adopt software, migrate data, and commit to subscriptions. The tools come first. The relationships come second. Each system captures a moment in time and then monetizes access to it.

Always Art starts where galleries actually work.

We are built around the relationship between artwork, gallery, artist, and collector. The tools exist to support that reality, not replace it. Galleries use the tools when they want, as much or as little as they want.

No subscriptions.
No commissions.
No data ownership.
No marketplace competition with galleries.

Always Art creates a single, living record per artwork that carries context forward. As artists, collectors, and circumstances change, the work remains legible. Provenance stays intact. The gallery's role stays visible.

Always Art does not monetize control.
It preserves continuity beneath everything else.

18

Do you own or share our data?

No.
Your data remains yours.

Always Art does not sell, share, or monetize user data. Information is private by default and shared only when you choose to share it, with the people or partners you trust.

Our role is to provide secure infrastructure, not to sit between you and your relationships.

19

What happens if we stop using Always Art?

You can export your data at any time.

Artwork provenance remains intact, while personal, private, or proprietary information is removed or anonymized where appropriate. What must persist for the artwork does. What belongs only to you stays with you.

This balance is intentional and designed to protect both continuity and privacy.

20

Are you trying to replace galleries or create another marketplace?

No.

Galleries are our partners, not our customers and not our competitors.

We do not perform the gallery's role, and we do not compete with galleries. Our lane is foundational infrastructure and tools that support how galleries already work.

Marketplaces exist only as optional contexts downstream. They are not the purpose of the system.

21

Can artists or collectors bypass galleries?

Always Art is designed to strengthen relationships, not weaken them.

Artists become artists to create. They do not want to manage customer service, sales, or marketing. When artists feel secure, supported, and aligned with their galleries, they have no incentive to bypass them.

Our tools are built to help artists and galleries operate as one team, with shared context, shared records, and shared success.

22

Are your Certificates of Authenticity legitimate?

Yes. And they are more robust than anything currently in use.

Most Certificates of Authenticity today are paper documents or static PDFs. They have no verification layer, no ledger, and no durable connection to the artist, gallery, collector, or the artwork's ongoing history. If they are lost, damaged, or the issuer disappears, they cannot be meaningfully replaced or validated.

Always Art Certificates of Authenticity are built on the Universal Art Record.

They are digitally secured, verifiable, and permanently linked to the artwork's provenance. Each certificate is connected to the artist, gallery, and collector, transfers with ownership, can be replaced if lost, and strengthens over time as the record grows.

Confidence is built in.

The system reflects who issued the certificate, how it has been validated, and how the artwork's history has evolved. Provenance is not a separate document. It is embedded in the record itself.

Always Art COAs are designed to be secure, durable, and future ready.
Not as artifacts of a moment, but as living proof of continuity.

23

Is this complicated to adopt?

No.

You can start with a single record, a bulk upload, or a transition from an existing system. You can move at your own pace, without disruption.

24

What if Always Art is acquired or changes direction?

Always Art is structured from day one to protect the foundation.

We are a public benefit company, with governance and legal safeguards designed to ensure the free layer remains free, even if ownership changes.

The Universal Art Record is built to persist beyond any single company. If others adopt or build on this model, the ecosystem still wins.

25

Why build this now?

Because it did not exist.

The art world already runs on trust, memory, and relationships, but its infrastructure has not kept pace. Capitalism does not require charging for everything.

Always Art was built to provide the system this field needs, guided by the values and ethics the art world already lives by.