Victoria Sears Goldman

Partner and co-founder Victoria Sears Goldman, Ph.D., has more than 10 years of experience conducting provenance, art historical, and art market research. Most recently, she worked as a senior director and the lead practitioner in the art risk practice at a leading global risk advisory and investigations firm. In that role, Victoria assisted law firms, private collectors, galleries, and insurance companies with litigation support, research pertaining to provenance questions and estate disputes, and other art-related matters. Victoria’s research focused not only on establishing detailed provenances for items currently in clients’ possession and for potential acquisitions, but also on vetting the parties involved in art transactions.

Prior to her work as a consultant, Victoria was the provenance researcher at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she investigated the ownership histories of approximately 150 paintings and sculptures in the museum’s permanent collection. These updated and annotated provenances were published on the museum’s website, allowing the public to access this valuable information for the first time. During the course of her research for the museum, Victoria uncovered previously unknown World War II–era provenance histories of multiple paintings and traced their whereabouts before, during, and after the war.

In February 2016, Victoria served as an expert witness for the plaintiff in the high-profile art fraud case De Sole v. Knoedler Gallery, LLC, for which she determined, through provenance research and a review of archival materials, that no record or paper trail existed for approximately 40 forged paintings sold by Glafira Rosales to Knoedler Gallery. Victoria prepared a detailed report of her findings and provided expert testimony at trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York.

Victoria has also conducted art historical and provenance research for the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and the Commission for Art Recovery.

Victoria attended the Art Crime Investigation Seminar (2011); the Provenance Research Training Program in Magdeburg, Germany (2012); and the 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018 Nazi-era provenance research workshops sponsored by the Association of Art Museum Directors, American Alliance of Museums, and the National Archives and Records Administration.

Victoria received her Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University, where she focused on 18th-century Italian prints and drawings. Her dissertation, “The Most Beautiful Punchinelli in the World”: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Punchinello Drawings, was the first comprehensive study of the elder Tiepolo’s nearly 35 drawings—including several previously unpublished works—of commedia dell’arte character Punchinello. Victoria earned her B.A. in art history from Barnard College, where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.