Luke Nikas: TIME100 Art 2026
As the amount of money being spent by the art world has risen over the past 20 years, the number of lawsuits—over botched business deals, alleged fakes, and Nazi loot—has grown in tandem. Luke Nikas has emerged as the art world’s go-to lawyer for some of its most bitter disputes. In the past decade, the partner at the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has played key roles in a scandal over approximately $70 million worth of fake Modernist paintings sold by Knoedler Gallery; a messy breakup between art advisers to the stars; a wrongful-termination suit brought by the former director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and a fight over the legacy of Robert Indiana, the late artist who created the famous “LOVE” sculpture. In April, Nikas secured a $102.2 million jury verdict for his client, Indiana’s former business partner, after an eight-year-long dispute with an art publisher over who controls the late artist’s legacy and can profit off his work. The more litigious the art world becomes, the busier Nikas gets.
