Abstract

Many national laws do not contain definitions of the art object or of the private or/and public collections. Some authors believe that the absence, in most national laws, of those definitions, is a hindrance to the production of the necessary documents that regulate the art transactions, national and international, thus causing perplexity and absence of security. Others hold the contrary opinion. Collecting, both private and public, transcend the individual lives of the human participants: Private collectors withdraw artworks from the circulation at the latest until their death, public collections usually do that forever. Furthermore, the fact that during the last decades several private collections turn into [public] museums, in many parts of the world, according to the options that each law may provide, is somehow evidence that the line between private and public property was and is constantly being displaced.