Manifesto
Authentication is not a choice between human expertise and technology. It is both of them, together.
Authenticity has always mattered in the art world. But the stakes have changed.
As values rise and sales break records, the pressure to be certain has grown beyond what traditional methods alone can absorb. Experts disagree. Cases stay unresolved. The evidence exists, but it has become too vast and complex for any one expert to evaluate consistently.
AI doesn’t replace that expertise. It depends on it. Without the scholarship, the authenticated works, and carefully curated reference material, there is nothing to train on.
But with it, AI can do what the human eye cannot: compare a work against thousands of references at once, find patterns across an entire body of work, and return a result that is documented, reproducible, and explicit about its limits.
At Art Recognition, we believe the future of authentication is not a choice between human judgment and technology. It is both, working together.
The reason we started
Three rigorous methods have always carried authentication: connoisseurship, provenance, forensic analysis. Each leaves gaps the others cannot fill. We started Art Recognition because one missing layer, the systematic visual analysis of an artist’s work at scale, could close some of those gaps. We built it as an independent, documented contribution. Not a replacement for established methods but a fourth layer alongside them.
Meet the team
At Art Recognition, every analysis is a collaboration between people and AI. We are a multidisciplinary team with expertise spanning art history, AI engineering, client relationships and communications, operations, and more.
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Dr. Carina Popovici
Chief Executive Officer & co-founder
Carina brings together scientific innovation and art-historical expertise to redefine authentication. As Founder and CEO of Art Recognition she leads the company’s vision, pioneering the use of artificial intelligence for the authentication of fine art.
She holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and before founding Art Recognition worked as a quantitative risk analyst in Swiss banking. Her path into the art world was driven by a simple but transformative question: Can technology help us build more trust and reduce the uncertainty around art authentication? That question led her to found Art Recognition. From the beginning, her goal has never been to replace art connoisseurs, but to explore how artificial intelligence can support their expertise.
Through research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and public engagement, she continues to advance the responsible use of artificial intelligence in authentication and the broader stewardship of cultural heritage.
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Lukas Knecht
Chief Financial Officer
Lukas oversees finance, legal and corporate affairs. As Chief Financial Officer, he leads finance, corporate matters, and human resources, drawing on four decades of experience in corporate finance, start-up management, and venture capital.
He holds a Master’s degree in law from the University of Basel, a Master’s degree in Real Estate Management from the University of Lucerne and is a Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS).
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Amaya Aramburu
Client Relations & Business Development
Amaya bridges Art Recognition’s science, the art-historical complexity of each artwork, and the people to whom it matters.
She leads client advisory, communications and business development, guiding collectors, lawyers, auction houses, galleries and institutions through the authentication process, from the first conversation to the final report.
Having lived, worked and studied across four continents, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa, she brings firsthand cultural fluency to a client base that is just as international.
Her combination of art market knowledge and multilingual client care ensures that every analysis is communicated with the clarity and discretion that questions of authenticity demand.
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Batu Arda Düzgün
AI Developer
Arda brings research-grade AI to questions the art world has debated for centuries.
As an AI researcher at Art Recognition, he develops and refines the methods that allow the technology to detect artist-specific patterns with scientific precision.
He holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from ETH Zurich, a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent Türkiye and has six years of experience in AI research, driven by a long-standing fascination with the intersection of art and technology.
His work helps make art authentication more transparent, trustworthy, and accessible, turning rigorous science into evidence the art world can rely on.
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Alessandra Conti
Lead Art Historian
Alessandra develops the art-historical methodologies that underpin Art Recognition’s AI-assisted authentication analyses.
As Lead Art Historian, she designs the research frameworks and defines the curatorial structure of the artist datasets that support the company’s AI analyses, ensuring they are grounded in rigorous scholarship, close visual analysis, and historical context. Her research focuses on restoration history and conservation practices, with particular attention to the impact of non-authentic repainting on the morphology and interpretation of works of art.
She holds a Specialized Master’s degree in Art History in a Global Context from the University of Zurich. Her academic background also includes Cultural Studies at the University of Milan and professional training at Central Saint Martins. She served as an Adjunct Professor of visual culture for six years at leading international institutions and spent more than a decade in publishing, bringing together academic research, teaching, and professional experience.
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Giuseppe Vigneri
Assistant Art Historian
Giuseppe strengthens the scholarly foundation beneath every Art Recognition analysis.
As Art Historical Research Assistant, he contributes to the creation of the artist datasets at the heart of each analysis, through art-historical research, visual analysis, and the study of archival, bibliographic, and market sources.
Trained for five years in Art History at Sapienza University of Rome and the Sorbonne in Paris, he gained experience across the art world, from the auction house Cambi to galleries and international art fairs, including Art Basel, and is currently pursuing an Executive Master in Art Market Studies at the University of Zurich, including valuation, provenance, art law, and new technologies applied to cultural assets.
His work reflects his broader interest in attribution, provenance, collecting, and the ways new technologies can support the future of art-historical expertise.
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Milena Mogicato
Assistant Art Historian
Milena contributes to the research and documentation that support Art Recognition’s analyses.
As Art Historical Research Assistant, she conducts archival and bibliographic research, as well as catalogue raisonné analysis to support the development of artist datasets. Her work involves tracing provenance, comparing stylistic and technical features across documented works, and synthesizing information from diverse sources to build coherent and reliable reference frameworks.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History with a minor in Business Administration and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Art History at the University of Zurich.
Her broader interests include the structures and dynamics of attribution, particularly in relation to the application of emerging technologies to art history.
Advisors
Our advisory board brings together expertise in art history, technology, and business. Their role is to help ensure that our technology is academically rigorous, technologically sound, and relevant to the decisions faced by collectors, institutions, and art market professionals.
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Noah Charney
Art History Advisor
Art crime expert and Pulitzer Prize finalist
Noah Charney is an art historian and author specialising in art crime and forgery, whose work situates contemporary authentication within the broader history of attribution and connoisseurship.
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Ully Wille
Business Advisor
Art dealer, former head of Sotheby’s in Zurich
Ully brings the perspective of the international art market to Art Recognition’s authentication work.
As an independent consultant to Art Recognition, he helps connect traditional connoisseurship with the company’s scientific analysis. Over a long career in the art market, he has repeatedly encountered forged and misattributed works — experiences that shaped his interest in more objective and reliable methods of authentication.
He served for ten years as Head of Sotheby’s Zurich and, following years of collaboration with leading international dealers, has worked since 2003 as an independent dealer and consultant specializing in 19th- and 20th-century art.
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Prof. Dr. Eric Postma
Scientific Advisor
Professor in Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University
Eric connects frontier research in artificial intelligence with the science behind Art Recognition’s analyses.
As a scientific advisor to Art Recognition, he brings more than two decades of work at the intersection of AI and art. A professor of artificial intelligence, he has studied and developed computer vision and signal processing methods across a wide range of fields, and since 2000 has focused on AI for the digital analysis of artworks. With Art Recognition, he has co-authored peer-reviewed papers on state-of-the-art AI methods for art authentication.
He holds a PhD in computer science, with a background in theoretical physics and cognitive science. Alongside his research, he supervises students, mentors colleagues, and shares his work through public lectures for audiences ranging from schoolchildren to industry leaders.