Panel: Modern Approaches to Restitution and Repatriation

Emmanuelle Polack

Provenance Research, Louvre Museum

Panelist

Emmanuelle Polack (she/her), heads provenance research at the Louvre Museum. In 2009, she curated the exhibition Rose Valland sur le Front de l'art at the Centre d'histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation in Lyon (CHRD). In 2011, she co-authored with Philippe Dagen Les Carnets de Rose Valland. From 2012 to 2017, she was a researcher at the Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA) and a French consultant associated with the Taskforce Schwabinger Kunstfund which became the Projekt Provenienzrecherche Gurlitt. In 2018, her doctoral dissertation in art history was awarded the Berthe Weill Prize for Research. In 2019, she curated the exhibition Le Marché de l'art sous l'Occupation at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris. Her eponymous book won the Ernest and Claire Heilbronn Foundation Prize and the Arts Prize awarded by the National Academy des Sciences, Belles-lettres des Arts de Bordeaux. Emmanuelle holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Paris, La Sorbonne.

Nicholas O'Donnell

Sullivan & Worcester, Partner

Panelist

Nicholas M. O'Donnell (he/him) is a Partner in the Litigation Department of Sullivan & Worcester in Boston. He has served as lead counsel on a variety of lawsuits concerning restitution and fine art sales and has advised museums, dealers, auction houses, and collectors worldwide about restitution, copyright, and de-accessioning issues. He is former Chair of the Arts, Cultural Institutions and Heritage Law Committee of the International Bar Association and a regular member of the New York City Bar Art Law Committee.  Nick is the author of numerous articles and papers on the subject of art disputes and regulation, as well as A Tragic Fate—Law and Ethics in the Battle Over Nazi Looted Art (2017), the first comprehensive overview of disputes in the U.S. over Nazi-looted art, including his clients’ claims for the Guelph Treasure or Welfenschatz, which Nick argued before the Supreme Court in 2020.

Antonia Bartoli

Yale University Art Gallery, Curator of Provenance Research

Panelist

Antonia V. Bartoli (she/her) is Curator of Provenance Research at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, where she is leading the Gallery’s first comprehensive provenance research project. She is a specialist in provenance research with expertise in the Nazi period and has lectured and published on topics including the Italian art market during the Second World War and the spoliation of books, manuscripts, and fine and decorative art objects in Austria, France, Germany, and Poland. She was formerly Spoliation Curator at the British Library, London, and has worked as a provenance researcher for Christie’s auction house, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and as a consultant on behalf of families seeking to recover objects lost due to Nazi persecution. She holds an M.A. in the history of art and archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and an undergraduate M.A. in the history of art from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

Laurel Zuckerman

Zuckerman v. Met, Lead Plaintiff

Panelist

Laurel Zuckerman (she/her) applies digital tools and methods borrowed from investigative data journalism to the art world and the Holocaust. The multiple layers of false provenances she discovered for an artwork her grandfather's family owned before fleeing the Nazis inspired her interest in linked data, knowledge graphs, computational analytics, natural language processing and network analysis. In 2016, after twelve years of research, she filed a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the restitution of Picasso's The Actor. Zuckerman is the author of two books published by Editions Fayard and the editor of Open Art Data.

Sreya Pinnamaneni

Yale Law School, JD Candidate '24

Moderator

Sreya Pinnamaneni (she/her) is pursuing a JD at Yale Law School. She is interested in questions at the nexus of law, art, and human rights. She has been involved with the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Clinic, and she previously served as a Legal Provenance Intern at Musée du Louvre. She holds a BA in History from Columbia University and a MSt in Intellectual History from the University of Oxford.

Katherine Wilson-Milne

Schindler Cohen & Hochman LLP, Partner

Moderator

Katherine Wilson-Milne (she/her) is a partner at Schindler Cohen & Hochman LLP and co-head of its art law practice. She advises clients in the art, cultural, and creative communities, including art galleries, other art businesses, collectors, artists, and nonprofits on transactional matters related to the creation, purchase, sale, lending, and financing of art, as well as gallery, auction house, and museum relationships. Katherine is also the co-host of The Art Law Podcast with Steve Schindler, and she regularly writes, teaches, and speaks about a variety of art law-related topics. She has guest lectured about art law at NYU, the School of Visual Arts, and other institutions, and speaks regularly at conferences and industry events on a variety of art law topics.