Same piece, different question: why the art market needs object identity
A new idea from Numeraire Future Trends: give every high-value object its own biometric-style identity, one that stays with it from owner to owner.
Walk through a fair like Art Basel and you hear one question over and over: is it real? The market has built a lot around answering it, with experts, archives and paperwork. But there is a second question that gets less attention, and it matters more as works keep changing hands: can this exact object be recognised again later, by someone who wasn't there at the first sale?
That was the starting point for Dr Marsha Lipton, co-founder and CEO of Numeraire Future Trends, when she spoke during Art Basel week.
The idea in brief
Numeraire creates biometric-level identities for high-value objects. Every physical surface carries microscopic features unique to it, much like a fingerprint or a retina, and the company captures them and verifies them with AI image recognition, then links the result to a blockchain Digital Product Passport. Lipton stressed that those images are only reference points, and that the identity comes from the secured, trusted system built around them.
A "fingerprint" captured from a watercolor and acrylic painting on paper. Courtesy of Numeraire Futu A "fingerprint" captured from a color photograph. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends A "fingerprint" captured from a color photograph. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends A "fingerprint" captured from a metal surface painted with acrylic paint. Courtesy of Numeraire Futu A "fingerprint" captured from a thick glass sculpture. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends A "fingerprint" captured from an oil painting on canvas. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends A "fingerprint" captured from an oil painting on canvas. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends A "fingerprint" captured from an oil painting on canvas. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends
Dr. Thomas Hardjono, MIT & Co-Founder and CTO of Numeraire Future Trends. Courtesy of Numeraire Futu Dr. Marsha Lipton at work at a private foundation. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends
Authenticity is a verdict, identity is a thread
The distinction she draws is worth slowing down on, because the two words get used as if they were the same. Authenticity is a judgment made at a moment in time: an expert looks at a work and says it is what it claims to be. Identity is about continuity. It asks whether the object in front of you today is the same one that was examined, sold, lent and inherited along the way.
The market has mostly handled that second question with paper. Invoices, exhibition labels, letters and certificates all travel next to the object rather than with it, and anything that travels next to an object can be separated from it, lost, or attached to a lookalike. Most of the time nobody notices, because most of the time the people involved know each other. The problem shows up when they don't.
Why this gets harder
Several things in the market are pushing the same way. Works circulate faster and further than they used to, often across borders and through online sales where buyers never see the object first. Ownership is more fragmented, and some of it is split into shares or tied to financial products. And objects outlive the relationships that made them trustworthy. A dealer's word is good while the dealer is around.
Lipton's memorabilia example makes the point most sharply. When the value of a piece comes from who owned it, a perfectly genuine item can still be the wrong one. The story is the asset, and the story only holds if the specific object can be tied to it, now and by whoever owns it in twenty years.
What it does to the experts
The most interesting claim in her talk concerns the people who already do this work. Her argument is that experts become more important, because their opinion would be attached to the object permanently, "digitally laminated" to it.
That is a real shift, and it cuts both ways. A recorded opinion is a stronger asset than one that sits in a file somewhere. But it also makes expertise more visible and more accountable. If a judgment is permanently linked to an object, then the reputation behind it is too. It also raises questions the market will have to answer: who decides which opinions count, how a view gets updated if scholarship changes, and who controls the record.
A regional signal
She closed with two announcements: acceptance into an NVIDIA programme, and an agreement in Dubai, which she described as an important decision for the whole GCC region and a sign of its wish to expand and secure art. That fits a wider pattern. Regions that are building collections and institutions now have the chance to put identity infrastructure in place from the start, rather than adding it later to archives that grew up on paper.
In Lipton's words, the identity of art should be as enduring as the piece itself. The more the trade moves online, gets divided into shares, or simply outlives its owners, the less that sounds like a technical wish and the more it sounds like a requirement.
Hilton Contemporary, Photo London 2025. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends Zilberman Gallery, Contemporary Istanbul 2026. Courtesy of Numeraire Future Trends
Note
Numeraire uses the expression "biometric-level" by analogy to the discriminating precision associated with human biometric systems. The terms "fingerprint" and "fingerprinting," when used in relation to inanimate objects, are figurative shorthand for reference capture and comparison of distinctive physical surface characteristics, such as unique surface imperfections or microstructural variations. They do not refer to biological traits or the processing of human biometric data. "Biometric-level" does not imply that a legally defined biometric system is involved, that every object can be uniquely identified under all conditions, or that a particular accuracy or error rate has been established for every use case.
Numeraire's Digital Product Passport (DPP) is an object identity record with biometric-level identification of the physical object, based on its own surface characteristics. It is not a Digital Product Passport within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, "ESPR"). It is not issued under ESPR, is not registered in the EU Digital Product Passport Registry, and does not satisfy any obligation under ESPR or its delegated acts. Numeraire does not act as a DPP service provider within the meaning of ESPR. Where a product is subject to ESPR, Numeraire's DPP may be used alongside the passport required by that regulation but does not replace it.
Numeraire does not independently determine whether the information in a record is true. Attribution, authorship and authenticity remain with the artist, estate, expert or authentication committee.
