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Leila A. Amineddoleh is a Partner and the Chair of the Firm’s Art Law Group. She handles both complex litigation and transactional matters related to the art market.  Leila serves as lead counsel in matters involving the sales of multi-million-dollar artworks and the recovery of stolen art and antiquities. She collaborates with forensic analysts, provenance experts, and art connoisseurs, devising legal strategies for authentication disputes.

Leila handles matters involving cultural heritage laws, representing clients in art theft and title disputes, negotiating settlement agreements, and drafting agreements for international artists, galleries, dealers, and art fairs. Leila’s work in this space also includes transactional matters involving drafting documents for major art collectors and non-profit organizations, as well as handling all aspects of due diligence, including authentication procedures, cultural heritage compliance, and title verification.

Leila assists clients with intellectual property matters involving litigation related to copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets for corporate clients, individuals, and start-ups.

Before joining Tarter Krinsky & Drogin, Leila founded Amineddoleh & Associates LLC, a boutique law firm specializing in art, cultural heritage, and intellectual property law.  Leila is a proud advocate for the protection of cultural heritage, having served as lead litigation counsel to foreign governments, consultant to the US Attorney's Office, and a cultural heritage law expert for the New York District Attorney’s Office Antiquities Trafficking Unit.

She is a recognized authority on art and heritage crime and law, and has lectured at the Frick Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, the Neue Galerie, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as at academic institutions including Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, University of Geneva in Switzerland, and Yale University. She has appeared as an art law expert on television networks and in business news outlets, including PBS, CNNChannel 4 NewsThe New York Times, ABC NewsLA TimesThe Art Newspaper, Artnet, Forbes Magazine, The Guardian, TIME Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Leila is widely recognized for her scholarly work in the area of art law, and she has contributed to many publications, including Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg, The Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage, and The Provenance Research Handbook.

In 2024, The Observer named Leila one of the most influential people in the art world for her work as one of the “bold innovators steering today’s art world through shifting markets, new collector dynamics, and cultural reinvention.” In 2023, Leila was ranked among the Top 10 Most Influential Art and Cultural Property Law Lawyers by Business Today’s 2023 Lawyer Awards.

Leila is the Chair of the Art Law Committee of the NYC Bar Association. Leila is also a classically trained pianist, and she still regularly performs.

Education
  • Boston College Law School (J.D.)
    • Editor, Intellectual Property & Technology Forum
  • New York University (B.A.)
Bar Admissions
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Languages
  • Italian
  • Spanish
Professional Affiliations
  • Chair, Art Law Committee of the NYC Bar Association
  • Chair Emeritus, Art Law Institute, N.Y. County Lawyers Association
  • Chair of the Board of Directors, Experiential Orchestra
  • Board Member, Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation
  • Member, Hispanic Society of America
  • Member, Bar of the City of New York Chamber Music Ensemble Committee
  • Member, International Council of Museums
  • Member, Arts Advisory Committee, City of Hoboken
Awards & Honors

  • Chambers and Partners High Net Worth (HNW) Guide, Art and Cultural Property Law, Band 2, 2021-2026
  • Business of Art Power List, 2024, The Observer
  • Super Lawyers, 2020-2025
  • Best Lawyers, 2026
  • New York Super Lawyers, 2026
Teaching
  • Adjunct Professor, New York University, Art Crime & the Law
  • Adjunct Professor, Fordham Law School, International Art & Cultural Heritage Law 
  • Lecturer, Christie’s Education, 2018-2024
Select Speaking Engagements
  • “Collecting the Future: Preserving Heritage and Culture Beyond the 250th,” The Winter Show (January 2026).
  • “Protecting Cultural Heritage,” Victoria & Albert Museum (May 2025). 
  •  "The Peripheries of International Law," Harvard International Law Journal, Harvard Law School (March 2025).
  • Lecturer for week-long seminar at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, December 2025.
  • “Negotiating Artists’ Agreements,” Institute of Art & Law (November 2024). 
  • “Countering Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property,” U.S. Department of State (October 2024).  
  • “Art & Antiquities Law: Legal Principles and Policy Issues Related to Restitution of Antiquities,” Federal Bar Council (June 2024). 
  • Moderator, “Museum Repatriations – Colonial Art,” Art Law Day Appraisers’ Association of America (November 2022).
  • “Cultural Heritage, Law Enforcement, and Antiquities Seizures,” 14th Annual Art Law Institute, New York County Lawyers’ Association (October 2022).
  • Keynote Speaker, “Dura-Europos: Past, Present, Future,” Yale University (April 2022).
  • “NFTs, New Technology & Collectibles,” Executive Master in Art Market Studies, University of Zurich (November 2021).
  • “The Guelph Treasure, Historic Significance and Legal Implications,” International Center of Medieval Art (June 2021).
  • “The International Repatriation of Antiquities,” Society for Art Law, University of Oxford (March 2021).   
  • “The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in Art and Antiquities Matters,” New York City Bar Association (February 2021). 
  • “Importance of Provenance in Legal Matters and Ownership Disputes,” Frick Collection (February 2020). 
  • “Cultural Heritage Repatriation,” State Department of the United States, US Mission to the United Nations (May 2019).
  • “Your Art Collection and the Law” Harvard Business School (May 2019).
  • “Protecting Cultural Heritage: Theft, Looting and the Law,” Victoria & Albert Museum (April 2019).
  • “Old Masters, New World: History of Collecting in the United States,” Philadelphia Museum of Art (February 2018). 
  • “Art Crime: Theft, Looting, Forgeries, and Vandalism,” Columbia University (August 2017).
  • “Panama Papers,” 2016 Art Law Day, Appraisers Association of America (November 2016). 
  • “Art Collecting: Due Diligence, Collections Management & the Law,” Philadelphia Art Museum (May 2016).
  • “Edvard Munch, Expressionism, and Art Crime,” Neue Galerie (April 2016).
  • "Should Museums Repatriate Cultural Artifacts?" Open to Debate (May 2026)
  • "Why Stolen Art Ends Up In The World's Best Museums" Mary in America (June 2026)
Select Publications
  • “The Looting and Destruction of Cultural Heritage,” Dura-Europos: Past, Present, FutureStudies in Classical Archaeology, Yale University Press (2025).
  • “Tomb-Raiding: The Second-Oldest Profession,” Harvard Art Law Review, Vol. I, Issue 1 (2025). 
  • “Kings, Treasures, and Looting: The Evolution of Sovereign Immunity and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,” 46 Colum. J.L. & Arts 419 (2023).
  • “Fair Use in US Law: The Path to Marano v. Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Art Antiquity and Law, Vol. XXVI, Issue 4 (December 2021).
  • “Politicizing of Cultural Heritage,” North Carolina Journal of International Law, Vol. XLV, (Spring 2020). 
  • “Looted Art in the Third Reich,” Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg. Ed. John Michalczyk. London: Bloomsbury Publishing (December 2017).
  • “Are You Faux Real? An Examination of Art Forgery and the Legal Tools Protecting Art Collectors,” Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2016).
  • “Cultural Heritage Vandalism and Looting: The Role of Terrorist Organizations and Wealthy Collectors,” Santander Art & Culture Law Review (March 2016). 
  • “The Ins and Outs of Stolen Art, Explained,” Artsy, May 7, 2016.
  • “The British Museum Should Return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece,” Forbes Opinion, Dec. 23, 2014.

Leila A. Amineddoleh

Leila A. Amineddoleh