Michael McCullough

Background

About Michael McCullough

Michael McCullough is a Founding Partner of Pearlstein & McCullough LLP, a law firm providing high- level services to the international art market. Michael McCullough's art law practice covers a broad area of the art market. He advises galleries, auctioneers, collectors, and museums on a variety of matters regarding consignment agreements, private sale agreement, authenticity issues, ownership issues, and government regulatory issues affecting the art market. During his ten years as compliance counsel at Sotheby’s, he gained extensive experience in the full range of commercial and regulatory concerns involved in art market transactions. Mr. McCullough has conducted provenance due diligence on over fifty thousand works of fine and decorative art and has worked on the sale of great artworks and collections, such as Picasso’s Garçon à la Pipe, The Forbes Collection of Faberge, The Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, and many more. Mr. McCullough was involved in some of the early efforts to sell artwork online. He was part of the team that created Sotheby’s platforms on Sothebys.com and Sotheby’s/eBay. He was also the art market counsel to Paddle8. Mr. McCullough has extensive experience in disputes over the sale and ownership of cultural property. He represented Hobby Lobby in the largest cultural property settlement in United States history when the company forfeited four hundred and fifty cuneiform tablets, three thousand clay bullae, and a payment of three million dollars. He has worked on dozens of other government seizure and forfeiture cases. Mr. McCullough is an Adjunct Professor at Cardozo School of Law where he teaches “Art Law.” Mr. McCullough is a Member of the Personal Property Resource Panel of the Appraisal Foundation. He is also a Senior Advisor and Past-Chair of the Art and Cultural Heritage Law Committee of the American Bar Association. Mr. McCullough’s writings, public speaking events, and media appearances can be found at https://pmcounsel.com/michael-mccullough/