Dr Christoph Rausch, MA (C.)

Dr. Rausch's current research project with the title Better than Gold: Art in Storage and the Making of Financial Value explores the recent emergence and proliferation of new types of art storage spaces and their implications for the changing global relations between art and finance.

Together with colleagues at universities and museums in the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Poland and Portugal, Rausch also works on an interdisciplinary research project about the rise of artists’ estates and relevant networks of care (LAsting Legacies: Contemporary Artists’ Estates Between PUblic Heritage and Private INheritAncE - LACUNAE). In this context, he zooms in on the relation between artist estate planning and financial estate planning in practices of wealth management.

Dr. Rausch is interested in methodological innovations that involve collaboration with practitioners in his fields of study, including artists. He co-founded the MERIAN network for artistic research, which includes a joint graduate school for PhD’s in artistic research by Maastricht University, the Zuyd University research centre for arts, autonomy and the public sphere, and the Jan Van Eyck academy.

Rausch participates in a consortium advising on trends in financial investigation (Trends4FI) in art and finance that includes members from Dutch government agencies, such as the police, customs and tax authorities, as well as from banks and other financial institutions.

Dr. Rausch is the main applicant and principal investigator (PI) of PRICELESS. To understand and tackle vulnerabilities to subversive (financial) crime, this public-private research consortium analyses the practices of value appraisal, insurance, and accounting of high value unique goods (HVUGs), such as artworks and expensive watches, and examines how these practices can become corrupted.