Experience & background
Experience
Attorney Niv Goldberg, our founder and principal, has taken part in some of the most important recent developments in Israel in the field of art and cultural property law, including:
- Stopping the deaccession and sale of hundreds of antiquities from the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem.
- The first-ever Nazi-looted art restitution claim against an Israeli museum brought to court.
- The recovery of archival materials offered for auction after being stolen from important national archives.
- Consulting on and development of collection management policies for major Israeli museums.
Background
Niv Goldberg is an attorney and member of the Israel Bar Association. He serves as NGM's founder and principal , and concurrently as Head of the Art & Cultural Property and Restitution Practice at Schwartz-Narkis & Co. Attorneys-at-Law. Niv completed his articled clerkship at E. Landau Law Offices, where he served in the Litigation and Cultural Property practices. He received his law degree (LLB), as well as a BA in Art History from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
Prior to founding NGM, Israel's only dedicated Art & Cultural Property Law firm, Niv served as director of the Hashava Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a comprehensive framework of legislation and regulation for the administration of cultural property in Israel, and in particular in regulating the mechanisms for identifying and locating artwork and Judaica looted from their owners during the Nazi period, and promoting restitution to their heirs.
Over a period of sixteen years, Niv served in various roles at Yad Vashem's Museum of Holocaust Art, including for six years as the museum's collection manager, thus acquiring a breadth and depth of knowledge in museum practice and serving as one of Yad Vashem's resident experts on Nazi-looted art.
Niv is a published author on Nazi-looted art and on Art Law, and among other publications, he is the author of the first scholarly article dedicated to the restitution of Nazi-looted art in Israel, as well as the Israel Chapter of the 1st (2000), 4th (2024) and 5th edition (2025) of the Art Law Review.
Niv is a full member of the Art Lawyers Association.