Alan E. Katz

Phone: (212) 818-1262
Fax: (212) 818-1264
Email: akatz@gss-law.com
vCard:

Alan Katz is counsel to Greenfield Stein & Senior, and was previously a member of the firm for over four decades.

Mr. Katz represents artists, collectors and galleries in the structuring of commercial transactions and the negotiation and drafting of agreements in such diverse areas as auction house consignment agreements, consignment of artworks to galleries, purchase and sale of artworks by/to collectors, art storage, the lending of artworks to museums, licensing, agency, using art as collateral for loans and the leasing of gallery space. Most recently, he represented the executor of an estate in the consignment of a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting to Sotheby’s that sold at auction for over $30 million.

Mr. Katz is a regular contributor to the magazine Art Business News, where he created the column Canvassing the Law, and authored, among other articles: Do I Really Need a Consignment Agreement? (Fall 2014), VARA and Public Art (Spring 2015), Negotiating the Art Studio Lease (Summer 2015), Licensing Your Art (Fall 2015) and Borrowing with Art as Collateral (Spring 2016).

In real estate, Mr. Katz has represented national organizations in the leasing of office space throughout the United States, landlords and tenants in the leasing of shopping center and other commercial properties, and both lenders and borrowers in the negotiation of ground leases and loan agreements secured by real estate. He also has represented cooperatives, condominiums and homeowners’ associations. Drawing upon his experience as general counsel of Institutional Investors Trust, a real estate investment trust listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Mr. Katz has represented numerous lenders and borrowers in the restructuring of troubled real estate loans.

Mr. Katz also specializes in software licensing, and has represented software development companies in drafting and negotiating software license, service, support, escrow and implementation agreements. The licensees in these transactions include international banks, investment banking firms, pension funds, state retirement systems, and the United Nations.

Mr. Katz obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis University and a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School, where he was an editor of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association (Real Property and Intellectual Property Law Sections), the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the Reserve Officers Association of the United States.

Mr. Katz currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Children’s Aid Society, where he is Chair of its Real Estate Committee. He formerly served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Milbank Housing Development Fund, NorCrown Bank in New Jersey and United Guardian, Inc., a pharmaceutical and health care products company listed on the American Stock Exchange, and for 20 years he served as a Trustee of The Music Conservatory of Westchester.

Mr. Katz’s representative clients have included Neue Galerie, Allan Stone Gallery, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Café des Artistes, National Audubon Society, Music Conservatory of Westchester, Hudson River Foundation, Mountain Development Corp., Steven Corn Furs, Manhattan Church of Christ, Guardian Insurance Company (St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.), Frustum Group, Inc. and Vitech Systems Group, Inc.