This paper considers the law and practice of authorship in relation to the conservation of works of contemporary art. Approaching the question of authorship in contemporary art conservation from a practice theory perspective, artistic authorship is framed not as a fixed status, but as an ongoing practice. Focusing on the use of contracts to determine the parameters of care and custodianship of artworks, I propose adopting the view of artists’ contracts as social artefacts advocated by legal scholar and art historian Joan Kee. This perspective enables an understanding of the formalised legal structures of artistic authorship that recognises their relational and negotiated nature and opens these structures to ‘the possibility of making’.