Privacy Policy

Who we are

This site, iconotheca.com, is operated by Servola Systems GmbH, Adolf-Diesterweg-Strasse 31, 67071 Ludwigshafen, Germany ("we"). We take the protection of your personal data seriously and process it only in line with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and applicable law.

What we collect

Newsletter: if you subscribe we store the email address you provide, in order to send you the newsletter. Contact: if you write to us we receive your name, email address and message so we can reply. Server logs: our hosting provider records standard technical data such as IP address, browser and time of access, for security and to operate the site.

Why we process it and the legal basis

We process your email to deliver a newsletter you asked for (your consent, Article 6(1)(a) GDPR) and your contact details to answer your enquiry and for our legitimate interest in running the title (Article 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR). Server logs are processed for the legitimate interest of a secure, functioning website (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Named individuals in our records

Our records describe the ownership history of works of art and name the people and firms through whose hands those works passed, where that is documented in a public source such as a museum record, an auction catalogue, an archive, a published claim or a court judgment. We name a person only where a cited public source supports it and the fact bears on the ownership history, and we weigh the public interest in an accurate record against the interest of the person named - most closely where the person is living, where the material touches an allegation of an offence, and where the connection is to persecution or dispossession. We do not aggregate personal information about anyone beyond what the ownership history requires.

The journalistic basis for our records

The records are journalistic and editorial work. We process the personal data in them for that purpose under Article 85 GDPR and the corresponding German provisions, which balance data protection against freedom of expression and information and disapply much of Chapter III for editorial processing. In practice this means the rights described below apply fully to your dealings with us - your subscription, your correspondence, our logs - but a request to erase a documented ownership fact from a published record is treated as a correction question rather than an erasure right, and answered on the evidence. Our data protection responsibilities are unaffected in every other respect.

If you are named and the entry is wrong

Write to [email protected] with what is wrong and, if you have it, the source. We will check it against the evidence and correct or remove what is wrong, note the change in the record's change log with the date, and reply to you. If you dispute a factual assertion about you, you may also require us to publish your reply to it under Section 20 of the German Interstate Media Treaty: send it in writing, signed, confined to factual assertions and no longer than the passage it answers, and we will publish it in the same place and presentation as the original and keep it there for as long as the original assertion is available.

Cookies and tracking

We do not set advertising or profiling cookies. Any cookie we do set is strictly necessary to operate the site.

Finding museums and exhibitions near you

The Museums and Exhibitions sections can sort by distance from a place. If you type a city, that text is matched against a list your browser has already downloaded; if we hold nothing in that city, your browser then downloads a second flat file - a list of place names and their coordinates, from GeoNames under CC BY 4.0 - and looks the city up in that. Both files are served from this site, and the text you type is never sent to a geocoding service or to any other third party. If you press "Use my location", your browser asks your permission and then gives the coordinates to the page, which uses them in your browser to sort that same list. The coordinates are not sent to us, are not written into any address, are not stored on your device and are not recorded anywhere in our logs or analytics. A city name you type may be kept for the length of your browsing session so it survives a click to another page; a coordinate never is. Declining, or ignoring the button entirely, leaves both sections fully usable.

Sharing and hosting

The site is hosted in the EU. We do not sell personal data. Processors act only on our instructions under a data processing agreement.

How long we keep it

Newsletter data until you unsubscribe. Correspondence for as long as needed to deal with your enquiry and to meet statutory retention periods. Server logs for a short technical period.

Your rights

In respect of the data we hold about you as a subscriber, a correspondent or a visitor, you have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection, and the right to withdraw consent at any time with future effect. Write to [email protected]. You may also complain to a supervisory authority. Where personal data appears inside a published record, the journalistic basis set out above applies and the correction and reply routes there are the ones that apply to it.

What this site is not

The records are research, published for information. They are not a warranty or an opinion of title, not an authentication, not a valuation or an appraisal, and not legal advice, and nothing here should be relied on as any of those in a transaction. A record states what the cited sources support on the date shown, including where they disagree or run out; it does not certify that a work is authentic, unencumbered, exportable or good to buy. Do your own diligence and take professional advice. German law applies.