Twenty years ago this month, the artist resale right (ARR) was introduced in the UK, entitling artists to royalties from the secondary market sales of their work. The legislation was initially met with hostility within the art trade. Major auction houses and dealers lobbied against it, fearing that high-value sales would move offshore as a result, particularly to the US and Hong Kong, where no such levies exist, and claimed that the additional bureaucracy and costs would outweigh any benefits. Some artists, too, expressed concern that the new law would reduce resale activity.
Much has changed since then. “On the whole, the art market has accepted it,” says Christian Zimmermann, the chief executive of Dacs, which collects and distributes artist royalties in the UK. The collector and dealer Ivor Braka, who was a long-time opponent of ARR and was taken to court for not paying, is now compliant. Trade bodies such as the Society of London Art Dealers and the British Art Market Federation are also largely supportive, although Tom Christopherson, the latter’s chairman, argues: “The ARR charges have created an administrative cost for London which is not replicated for its main competitors, New York and Hong Kong.”
Going global
Zimmermann says a “global expansion” of ARR is the only way to level the playing field. “In particular, we need to get it introduced in the US and China, which are the two biggest art markets in the world.” He acknowledges that getting US adoption is “a tall order”—legislation to introduce a 5% levy on works sold in California by Californian citizens was deemed unconstitutional and overturned in 2018. In China, draft amendments made between 2012 and 2014 for copyright laws to include a resale right were eventually removed, in part due to opposition from art market professionals.
But momentum is building for the global adoption of a droit de suite. Canada and South Korea are both working to approve resale royalty laws in 2027. They will join a growing list of 90 countries that now have some form of resale right. The EU implemented ARR in 2006, while resale rights came into force in Australia and New Zealand (both of which have reciprocal agreements with the UK) in 2010 and 2024 respectively.
It is entirely fair to pay artists royalties for secondary market sales of their work
Peter Doig is among the estimated 60,000 visual artists in the UK to benefit from royalty payments. He says: “It is entirely fair that artists receive royalties from secondary market sales of their work, and appropriate that the benefits of the ARR are now being recognised and introduced more widely across the world.”
Estates and charities
The estates of artists, too, are often dependent on resale royalties, which apply for 70 years after an artist’s death. Jenny Hand, the director of the Munnings Art Museum, near Colchester, says royalties make up a third of income for the Alfred Munnings estate. “If it didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to look forward to the future the way that we are currently,” she says. The Patrick Heron estate and charitable trust is “totally dependent on the ARR”, according to the artist’s daughters Katharine and Susanna Heron, while the professional management of Howard Hodgkin’s archive would not be possible without the royalties.
Although ARR has been criticised as helpful only for artists with established careers, emerging and mid-career artists are among its biggest beneficiaries. Just under two-thirds of individual ARR payments (60%) are under £500, meaning they are paid on works priced between £1,000 and £5,000, while 8% of all royalties go to first-time recipients, including emerging artists born after 1990.
Royalties are calculated on a sliding scale—from 4% on works priced up to £50,000 to 0.25% on works over £500,000—with the maximum ARR payment for a single work capped at £12,500. Dacs has collected more than £176m since ARR was introduced in 2006, distributing over £144m to 6,997 artists and their heirs, including £9.2m in 2025 alone.
Frozen cap
Within the UK, there are several areas where the legislation could be improved. As the art lawyer Jon Sharples points out, the £12,500 cap hasn’t been raised in 20 years. “If it had kept pace with inflation, it would be around £18,000 today, but it’s a fine line, as we need the UK to stay competitive compared with New York or Hong Kong,” he says. He adds that a published list of countries whose artists could apply for ARR if their works were sold in the UK was abolished in 2012; the UK now unilaterally decides which foreign nationals are entitled to ARR payments.
Perhaps most importantly, there is still some ambiguity over which types of work qualify. Zimmermann says: “There’s an interpretation issue in the UK, particularly when it comes to the applied arts. A lot of art market professionals do not believe that works of design, even if they are copyright-protected, fall within the realm of the legislationon resale rights, so some clarification is needed there.”
With the onset of AI, discussions around what constitutes a work of art and what merits protection are likely to grow even louder. Zimmermann welcomes such debate. “The mindset is changing in terms of how we support artists, particularly in the current climate where visual art isn’t being funded and is under threat, including in the US,” he argues. “Anything that can be done to support artists to continue creating is a good thing. In the past it’s been an uphill struggle, but the time is right to open discussions about what creativity means—for the benefit of all involved in the art trade— and that includes artists.”
