ALANA KUSHNIR

DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER

Art Lawyer | Advisor | Curator

Alana Kushnir is a leading art lawyer and advisor working with high-net-worth individuals, family offices, creatives, non-profits and corporates. She provides legal and strategic guidance on acquisitions, commissions, financing, resale, lending, exhibiting, logistics and exports, copyright licensing, succession planning, cultural philanthropy and legacy management - helping clients approach their collections with confidence, foresight and purpose.

Alana brings a distinctive blend of legal, arts and technology expertise, built on two decades of experience across private practice, academia and the creative sector. She began her career in competition and intellectual property law with King & Wood Mallesons before founding Guest Work Agency in 2014, Australia’s first dedicated art law and advisory practice.

From 2018 to 2024, Alana served as Principal Investigator for the Serpentine Galleries’ Legal Lab - a research and development programme exploring how the law can better support collaboration across art, science and technology by identifying legal challenges and prototyping accessible, practical legal tools and solutions for the cultural sector. She was also a sessional lecturer at The University of Melbourne between 2016 - 2021, coordinating and teaching subjects for Bachelors and Masters degrees within the School of Culture and Communication, including Contemporary Art, Curating Contemporary Art, Arts Law, Managing Creative Content and Exhibitions Management.

Alana is widely recognised as a thought leader and innovator in the legal industry, having been named Thought Leader of the Year at the Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards (2024), Sole Practitioner of the Year (2022), and listed as One to Watch in Entertainment Law and Intellectual Property Law by Best Lawyers (2023–24), alongside other national award shortlists for legal innovation and education.

Alana has curated exhibitions and public programs in Australia and internationally, including for the ICA (London), Zabludowicz Collection (London), Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (Sydney), Boetzelaer Nispen (Amsterdam), Aesop (Sydney) and the Jewish Museum of Australia (Melbourne). She has presented her research and writing on art, technology and the law in a wide range of contemporary art publications and books, including Brooklyn Rail Magazine, Right Click Save, A Research Handbook on Art and Law (Edward Elgar), NFTs, Creativity and the Law (Routledge), as well as at conferences and talks at Agder University (Norway), Monash University (Melbourne), City University, the Alan Turing Institute, Somerset House, Goldsmiths University of London and Sotheby’s Institute of Art (London), the National Museum of Art (Osaka) and more.

Alana holds a Master of Fine Art (Curating) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Art History), both with First Class Honours from The University of Melbourne. She is a Board Director at the Jewish Museum of Australia, an Arbitrator of the Court of Arbitration for Art (CAfA), a member of the International Bar Association’s Art, Cultural Institutions and Heritage Law Committee, and a member of the Art Consulting Association of Australia (ACAA).

With this multifaceted background, Alana combines creativity, strategic acumen and intellectual rigour to deliver bespoke solutions for clients - renewing how legal frameworks can underpin and elevate creative and cultural legacies.