Ethics

Attentive to ethics, the committee ensures that practices are regularized: integrity and reliability constitute their guideline.

The quest for professional unity being at the heart of the creation of the CPGA, a common code of ethics for gallery owners was drafted in 1990, revised and reissued in 2016. The birth of this code reflected the desire to self-regulate and coordinate the practices and attitudes of professionals. Constantly evolving since its conception, this code of ethics inscribes its ethical dimension, its principles of loyalty and transparency, in the tradition of the great merchants.

By joining the Committee, galleries agree to abide by the Code of Ethics of Art Galleries, which sets forth the rights, obligations and ethical practices of art galleries and dealers. This Code outlines the professional relationships between gallery owners and artists or an artist’s beneficiaries; relationships with buyers or sellers, but also relationships between colleagues. It is based on recognized professional practices, respecting the interests of each party, and is based on applicable legislation, case law and regulations.

Although the Committee does not intervene in any way in the relations between artists and gallery owners or between collectors and gallery owners, it may nevertheless be called upon to play an advisory or even a mediating role, and is available to gallery owners to provide them with any administrative, legal or fiscal information.

Eco-responsibility of art galleries
It seems unavoidable for the Professional Committee of Art Galleries to encourage the profession to adopt behaviors in line with the observed climate changes.

In 2019, at the request of Georges-Philippe Vallois, then president of the CPGA, the members of the Board of Directors have asked the company Sustainable Art Market® to develop a pullout to the code of ethics in order to raise awareness of members in a preventive way to these new behaviors. Galleries are here, and for the first time within a Code of Ethics, encouraged to adopt simple, effective and non-coercive actions.

These ecological concerns are accompanied by the search for tools adapted to art galleries, in favor of the sustainable and circular economy.