Art & Cultural Property
At the heart of art and cultural property law
Our team has a stellar reputation in the world of art and cultural property law, in Switzerland and worldwide, a reputation first established by founding partner Pierre Lalive, who played a key role in developing the law in this area from the 1950s onwards. This included contributing to the UNIDROIT Convention of 24 June 1995 on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects.
Our lawyers sit on several boards of museums and art-related foundations such as the Kokoschka Foundation, International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the Swiss National Museum and the Art Law Foundation. We also represent one of the largest Swiss private art collections.
Specialist expertise with rare breadth and reach
Museums, galleries, auction houses, collectors, artists, art market professionals, charities, foundations, governments and major banks trust us to negotiate, advise and litigate on all legal issues in the global art world – protecting precious assets that are both passions and investments.
Specialist areas include:
- Art transactions and finance: advice on the buying and selling of fine art, antiques and other collectibles, and on transactions involving art as a collateral.
- Art due diligence: regulatory and reputational due diligence for art market operators on issues of money laundering, trafficking of antiquities, looted art and fakes, a key area for the preservation of art market integrity.
- Estate planning: estate planning and support in setting-up appropriate structures to preserve art collections over generations.
- Art disputes: assistance in all art-related disputes including cases of defective title, provenance, authenticity, attribution and restitution, as well as criminal and fraudulent conduct. We have significant experience in claims for restitution artworks looted during WWII.
Community support in action
LALIVE supports the annual Pierre Lalive and John Henry Merryman Fellowship in Art and Cultural Heritage law, together with the Art Law Centre of the University of Geneva and the International Cultural Property Society. The fellowship is awarded each year to a scholar aged under 40 for the best article published in the International Journal of Cultural Property Law, published by Cambridge University Press.
Experience
