Toward Trust and Transparency in the Netherlands: Art Market Compliance (and Defiance) Viewed Through Financial Transactions Monitoring at a Major Dutch Bank

What complicates art market participation in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing predicated upon the logic of financial regulation? We present a selection of empirical case studies from within a bank environment pointing to pertinent issues and practices of compliance (and defiance), some of which at least may be recognizable also to art market actors when doing their own due diligence research and transactions monitoring. Having conducted structured and semi-structured interviews with experts from the fields of art market compliance and art appraisals, our analysis emphasizes the malleability of value and the use of valuation and pricing expertise. We raise fundamental questions about changing relations of trust and transparency.