
Irina Tarsis
Founder & Managing Director
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Irina Tarsis, Esq. is an art historian and a practicing attorney admitted to the bar in New York State. She earned her Masters Degree in Art History from Harvard University and her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (NY). Ms. Tarsis launched the Center for Art Law as a blog in 2008/2009. Starting in 2012, Ms. Tarsis began offering internship opportunities to interested law students, invited guest writers to publish research articles with the Center for Art Law website, and organized events to bring lawyers and artists together for meaningful conversations and exchanges of ideas. Under her leadership, the Center was incorporated as a stand-alone non-profit organization in December 2017. Ms. Tarsis has served on the faculty of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art (2021), FIT/CUNY (2021), Teachers College/Columbia University (2020), Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (2012, 2017-2018), and the European Shoah Legacy Institute/Provenance Research Training Workshops in Vilnius, Lithuania (2013), Athens, Greece and Rome, Italy (2014). An active member of multiple bar associations and art law committees in the US and Europe, she contributes to scholarship through regular publications and lectures on various topics, including resale royalty rights, due diligence in provenance research, and fair use issues affecting visual arts. Her publications include a chapter in The Art Law Review on artists’ rights as well as articles in the IFAR Journal, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Cultural Heritage & Arts Review, Library and The Cultural Record, the ArtWatch UK Journal and the Institute of Art & Law’s journal, Art Antiquity and Law.

Atreya Mathur
Director of Legal Research
Atreya Mathur, joined the Center first as our inaugural Judith Bresler fellow in 2021. A Master of Laws Graduate from New York University School of Law where she specialized in Competition, Innovation, and Information Laws, with a focus on copyright, intellectual property, and art law. She is an attorney from India and received her Bachelor of Laws and Business Administration from the School of Law, Christ University. Atreya also co-founded m e r a k i consultancy, a consultancy service focused on legal academia and higher education in law. She has had her papers on copyright, art, international trade, and corporate governance published in several journals including the European Journal of Sustainable Development, the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, and the New York University Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law Journal Blog. She has also presented her papers and research at the Central European University in Budapest and at the International Conference on Sustainable Development in Rome.