According to Georgina Adam of Art Newspaper, Amedeo Modigliani scholar Kenneth Wayne has founded a nonprofit organization that will work to create a definitive database of the artist’s paintings amid a market that is saturated with forgeries and conflicting scholarship. The Modigliani Project’s mission is to research, document, and encourage appreciation of the artist and his works.

Modigliani’s paintings have been far surpassing their estimates at auction. At Christie’s in New York in November 2015, the artist’s Nu couché (Reclining Nude), 1917–1918, raised over $170 million, nearly $100 million over its estimate, which set the record for highest amount paid for a work by the artist at auction. Five specialists on the artist have authored catalogues raisonnés and the only one accepted by auction houses is the catalogue written by Ambrogio Ceroni, which hasn’t been updated since 1972.

Complicating matters is a well-known dispute among experts Christian Parisot and Marc Restellini. Parisot, who penned one catalog, was accused of knowingly authenticating fake works. The French scholar, Restellini, stepped away from compiling works for his own database on artist after he received death threats, but has decided to continue his work. The Paris-based Institut Restellini has announced that it will publish an online catalogue raisonné of paintings by the end of this year and will require payment in order to access it. Restellini is financing the project through consulting fees and issuing certificates of authenticity.

The Modigliani Project intends to be a comprehensive resource on the artist, but it will start by outlining Modigliani’s techniques and process through scientific analysis beginning with works from French public collections. Wayne, who has studied the artist for thirty years, said, “an exciting first step has been taken, with further news to come.”

Wayne, who has held various museum positions, including deputy director for curatorial affairs at the Noguchi Museum and chief curator at the Heckscher Museum of Art, will team up with a group of French curators and conservators, including Brigitte Léal, the deputy director of the Centre Pompidou; Sophie Krebs, the chief curator of the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris; and Cécile Girardeau, a curator at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. The project leader is Michel Menu, the chief conservator of Paris’s Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France.