Privacy policy

Who we are

Artmena (“we”) is an online publication and marketplace for art from the Middle East and North Africa, run from Lebanon. We decide how the personal data described here is used, and we handle it under Lebanese law, including Law No. 81 of 2018 on Electronic Transactions and Personal Data. For anything about your data, write to support@artmena.com.

What we collect

Visitors. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. We measure visits with Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights, which record the page viewed, the referring site, country, browser, device type and page loading times without cookies and without identifying you. Our hosting provider keeps short technical logs, including IP addresses, to run and protect the site.

Accounts. If you make an account, we keep your name, city, saved works and lists, the artists and galleries you follow, your email choices, and the messages you exchange with a gallery about a work. The gallery sees only what you write to it. A list you share by link shows the works, never your name.

Page counts for artists and galleries. When you open an artist, gallery, exhibition or artwork page, we add one to that page’s total for the day, so its artist or gallery can see how many people visit. We store only the page, the daily total and the kind of place the visit came from (a search engine, social media, Artmena itself, a direct visit or somewhere else), worked out from the referring site; the referring address itself is never sent or stored. No cookie, no IP address and nothing that could identify you. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, you are not counted.

Forms. When you use the contact form we collect your name, email address, subject and message. When you ask about a work, we collect your name, email address, phone number if you give one, and your message. When you ask for a studio invitation, we collect your name, email address, whether you are an artist or a gallery, and your message. When you sign up for new-show alerts for a city, we collect your email address and the city; nothing is sent until you confirm by email, and every alert has a one-click unsubscribe. With each of these we store a scrambled code made from your IP address (a salted hash, not the address itself) to stop spam and repeated submissions.

Collectors with an account. Your email address, a display name, your password (stored only in scrambled form by our authentication provider) or your Google sign-in, the works you save and the artists you follow. If you keep a private collection in the studio, the details and images you add (titles, artists, values, locations, notes) are visible only to you.

Artists. Everything you add to your studio: your name, practice, year of birth, where you live, portrait, introduction, biography, statement, CV, exhibitions, works and their images and prices, activity and any documents you upload. What you choose to publish appears on your public page once we approve it.

Galleries. Your gallery’s details (name, address, opening hours, website, email, phone, Instagram, cover and logo), your artists, works, exhibitions, fairs, and the inquiries collectors send about your works.

People in our public directory. Our directory includes profiles of artists, galleries and exhibitions that we prepare ourselves from public sources, such as gallery and museum websites, exhibition records and the press. These pages hold professional information only: names, birth years, where artists are based, their work, CVs, exhibitions and collections. If a page is about you and something is wrong, or you would like it removed, write to support@artmena.com and we will correct or remove it. If you are the artist or gallery, you can also ask for a studio invitation and manage the page yourself.

Cookies

We use only the cookies that keep you signed in. They are needed for the site to work and are not used for anything else. We do not use advertising, marketing or tracking cookies, so we do not show a cookie banner.

Why we use it

To run your account and studio and publish the pages you ask us to publish (our agreement with you); to send show alerts you sign up for (your consent, which you can withdraw by unsubscribing); to keep a public directory of the art scene (our legitimate interest in documenting it); to pass your inquiry to the gallery or artist who holds the work and to answer your messages (your request); and to keep the site secure, prevent spam and understand how the site is used in aggregate (our legitimate interest in running a safe, working publication). We do not sell personal data and we do not use it for advertising.

Like most publishers, we use AI tools in a supporting role, to help our editors with research and writing. Our editors check and approve everything we publish. AI plays no part in the sale of artworks and makes no decisions about you, your account or your works.

Who receives your data

• Supabase stores our database, sign-ins and uploaded files (servers in Frankfurt, Germany).
• Vercel hosts the site, runs its server code and provides the cookieless visit statistics. It handles every request, including IP addresses, and may process them in the United States.
• Google receives your sign-in request and shares your name, email and profile picture with us, only if you choose “Continue with Google”.
• Cloudflare runs the security check on our sign-in and sign-up forms (Turnstile). It looks at technical signals from your browser, such as your IP address, to tell people from automated bots, and does not use them for advertising.
• Resend sends our emails, including form messages and show alerts, so it receives the name, email address and message involved.
• AI tools that support our editors may receive profile and article text while it is being prepared.
• The gallery or artist holding a work receives the inquiry you send about it.
• Search engines (through IndexNow) receive the addresses of public pages when they change. No personal data beyond what is already on those public pages.

Share buttons and links to Instagram, LinkedIn or X only contact those services if you click them. Some of these providers store and process data outside Lebanon, including in Germany and the United States. We use providers that protect the data they hold for us.

How long we keep it

• Account, studio and collection data: for as long as you keep your account.
• Contact messages and invitation requests: 24 months, then deleted automatically.
• The IP codes stored with forms: 30 days, then cleared automatically.
• Show alerts: unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted after 7 days; confirmed ones are deleted when you unsubscribe.
• Inquiries: kept in the receiving gallery’s or artist’s studio until they delete it or their account.
• Hosting logs: a few days, at most 30 days.
• Backups made by our providers can hold deleted data for a short time after deletion, normally no more than 30 days, before it is overwritten.

Keeping your data safe

Your data is stored with established providers, encrypted in transit, and protected by access rules so that each person can reach only their own private information. Passwords are never stored in readable form, and we check new passwords against known breaches. Only a small number of authorised people can reach the admin tools. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself at any time from Delete your account (linked from your account page and your studio). This removes the sign-in, your profile, any artist or gallery page and everything attached to it (works, exhibitions, CV, collection, saves, follows and inquiries you received) and every file you uploaded, from all our storage. It cannot be undone. Inquiries you sent to a gallery stay with that gallery; ask us and we will have them removed. You can also ask us to delete your data by email.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive the data you gave us in a portable format. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it at any time. Write to support@artmena.com; we answer within one month.

Children

Artmena is not meant for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

When this policy changes we update the date at the top. If a change affects how we use the data of account holders, we will tell them by email before it takes effect.