Martha B.G. Lufkin
Martha Lufkin advises nonprofit organizations on matters ranging from formation and application for tax-exempt status to sophisticated tax questions. She advises clients on issues of administering nonprofit organizations, including executive compensation, the handling of potential conflicts of interests between the nonprofit and its board members or employees, contracts, licensing, and legal issues related to employees and volunteers. She is an experienced tax and trusts and estates lawyer.
Martha brings special expertise to Hurwit & Associates on legal issues facing museums and libraries, including collections management, laws restricting antiquities ownership, loans of collection items, licensing, deaccessioning donated objects, partial gifts of art, artists’ rights, and other questions related to collections, exhibits, education and museum activities.
Martha is experienced in advising donors on charitable giving techniques, from basic gifts to legal issues involved in gifts of real estate, non-cash gifts, life estates and charitable trusts, and related valuation issues. She is also knowledgeable in the issues faced by nonprofit organizations in accepting charitable gifts, including donor restrictions, and policies for accepting non-cash gifts. She is highly experienced in advising clients on estate planning, wills and trusts, and was associated with the firms Shearman & Sterling New York, and Bingham Dana & Gould (now Bingham McCutchen), Boston, for a decade.
Martha is a widely published writer and is sensitive to public relations issues which nonprofits may face. She is known nationally and internationally for her reporting on museum law, charitable tax deductions, and art law as Legal Correspondent for The Art Newspaper, an influential monthly publication covering the art world. Her articles have also been published in scholarly law journals.
Martha Lufkin is a member of the New York and Massachusetts bars. She received her B.A. from Yale College magna cum laude, an M.Litt. in Politics from Oxford University, Hertford College, where she was a Senior Scholar, and her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
