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Coming Soon? A Single Website with Every Buyable Artwork

The Verisart online art exchange platform is planned to launch in September.
Via Flickr user Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, some rights reserved

Every piece of art on the market in one online catalog? That's the objective of Verisart, a startup site co-founded by Saatchi Online and Sedition former chief executive, Robert Norton. Launching in September, the LA-based company's first milestone will incorporate a swath of submissions sent in directly from artists. Using image identification software, artists will enter their works, general information, and price points into Verisart’s database. With the help of the distributed data register Blockchain, Verisart will then verify and authenticate each painting, book, print, and sculpture to validate the works—before transactions, and after acquisitions.

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Similar proposals have been made over the years, and as with its predessors, only time will tell if Verisart’s many promised advantages—archiving, search functionality, a boom in the art market—will out outweigh its inevitable drawbacks. As Norton himself told Bloomberg, “I don’t underestimate the mammoth task ahead of us for one second. For sure, there will be a bunch of hurdles to overcome. But as an entrepreneur, that’s what gets you up in the morning.”

Read more about Verisart on Bloomberg.

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