From MoMA's Back Offices to the Negotiating Table: How Caroline Keegan Built New York's Go-To Art Law Practice

Beforeshe was negotiating art fair sales and structuring loans against museum-gradecollections, Caroline Keegan was inside the institutions themselves - at theMuseum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, andthe Calder Foundation. That vantage point is what separates her practice today.Where many attorneys approach art law strictly through an intellectual propertyor transactional lens, Keegan understands the art world from the inside: howgalleries actually operate, how collections are managed day to day, and whatartists genuinely need protected as their careers evolve, rather than what astandard contract template assumes they need.

AtKurzman Eisenberg Corbin & Lever, Keegan has built a practice advisingclients across gallery sales, negotiations at major art fairs, securedtransactions using art as collateral, loans with national galleries, andcomplex deals with auction houses handling significant legacy collections. Thatwork has let her clients secure stronger protections, more favorable businessterms, and long-term control over both their creative output and their estates- outcomes that matter as much to a mid-career artist navigating a first majorsale as to an institution managing a legacy collection decades in the making.Clients consistently point to the same thing in describing her: an ability totake highly technical legal and business concepts and translate them intosomething clear enough to act on, which matters enormously to creativeprofessionals who never trained as dealmakers and shouldn't have to become oneto protect their own work.

Keegan'simpact doesn't stop at her paying clients. As a member of the Associates Boardof Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, she has taken on substantial pro bono worksupporting artists who would otherwise have no access to experienced legalrepresentation, and she recently hosted a VLA panel, "Business of Art:Forming an LLC," walking working artists through corporate entitystructures most of them had never had explained to them in plain languagebefore. It is the same instinct that defines her paid work - translating denselegal structure into something a working artist can actually use - justextended to people who couldn't otherwise afford to have it explained to themat all. That approachability shows up publicly, too: multiple client reviewsname Keegan specifically, citing her responsiveness and her ability to guide peoplethrough complex matters with clarity and care.

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