Within the art world, few distinctions are invoked as frequently, and confused as consistently, as the difference between appraisal and authentication. The terms are often treated as interchangeable, particularly in commercial contexts, yet they arise from separate historical needs and serve fundamentally different institutional functions.
This confusion is not incidental. It reflects a broader collapse of procedural literacy as artworks circulate outside museums, archives, and long-established market infrastructures. As more art moves through private sales, online platforms, and informal channels, the language of valuation is increasingly asked to do work it was never designed to perform.
For institutions, however, the distinction remains operative. Appraisal and authentication are not parallel judgments. They answer different questions, rely on different forms of evidence, and produce different kinds of authority. The separation continues to govern how work is recorded, contextualized, and trusted.
An art appraisal is a valuation process. Its purpose is to assign a monetary estimate to an object at a specific moment, for a specific use: insurance, taxation, estate planning, or sale. Appraisals are contingent by design. They respond to market conditions, comparable sales, demand, and material characteristics. An appraisal may change over time without any change to the artwork itself.
Crucially, appraisal does not establish truth about authorship, origin, or historical legitimacy. It assumes a working premise, often supplied by the owner or prior documentation, and calculates value within that frame.
Authentication, by contrast, is a determination of authorship or origin. It asks whether a work can be reliably attributed to a particular artist, studio, period, or context. Authentication is evidentiary rather than market-based. It depends on provenance, archival records, material analysis, scholarly consensus, and institutional acknowledgment.
These functions are separated because they require different competencies and produce different outcomes. Appraisal operates within economic systems. Authentication operates within historical ones. Institutions recognize this division because collapsing it compromises both.
The most common misalignment occurs when appraisal is treated as a substitute for authentication. A numerical value is mistaken for confirmation of legitimacy. A document intended for insurance is read as proof of authorship.
For living artists, the consequences are structural. Appraisals may circulate without durable records, creating the appearance of legitimacy without institutional grounding. Conversely, works with clear authorship but limited market exposure may remain undervalued, reinforcing the misconception that value equals validation.
This misapplication does not stem from individual error but from systemic gaps. As art circulates faster than institutions can absorb it, market instruments are asked to perform historical functions. They cannot.
Institutions cannot rely on appraisal to establish authorship, context, or significance. They must instead evaluate:
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The continuity of the artist’s practice
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The documentation surrounding the work’s production
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Its placement within a broader body of work
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The stability of its record over time
Appraisal may appear alongside these considerations, but it does not replace them. The distinction is procedural. It determines what enters the archive, what can be cited, and what can be meaningfully contextualized.
Without this separation, institutions risk conflating market fluctuation with historical fact, a failure that destabilizes the record itself.
Naturalist Gallery of Contemporary Art operates with this distinction embedded in its curatorial framework. Works are not treated as authenticated by virtue of valuation, nor evaluated solely through market indicators.
Instead, emphasis is placed on record formation: consistent attribution, documented exhibition context, and continuity of practice. Appraisal may occur within parallel economic systems, but institutional evaluation remains grounded in authorship, context, and documentation.
In this structure, legitimacy is not inferred from price. It is established through sustained institutional recognition.
Appraisal and authentication serve different masters. One responds to the market; the other to history.
When the distinction is maintained, value and meaning can coexist without distortion. When it is ignored, neither function performs reliably.
Institutions preserve this separation not as a matter of preference, but as a condition of record. In doing so, they ensure that what is valued today can still be understood tomorrow.