Leila Amineddoleh

Practice Areas

Art Law

Cultural Heritage Law

Intellectual Property

Litigation

International

Career

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 and 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.

Leila is the Chair of the Art Law Committee for the NYC Bar Association. Chambers and Partners High Net Worth Guide has recognized her as a leading lawyer for Art and Cultural Property Law for four consecutive years. 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 also a classically trained pianist, and she still regularly performs.

Professional Memberships

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

Publications

She is a recognized authority on art and heritage crime and law, and has lectured at dozens of art institutions, including 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, CNN, Channel 4 News, The New York Times, ABC News, LA Times, The Art Newspaper, Artnet, Forbes Magazine, The Guardian, TIME Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Leila is widely recognized for her scholarly work in art and cultural heritage 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.

Expert in these Jurisdictions

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 Spoken

Italian

Spanish

Education