FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, DC – October 13, 2016 – Thomas R. Kline is a new law partner in the Washington, DC offices of Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC. Kline is a pioneer in art law responsible for a number of groundbreaking cases, including setting precedent in the law governing recovery of antiquities and Nazi-looted art. He joins CHP from Andrews Kurth LLP, where he previously served as DC Office Managing Partner.
“Tom is a legend in our field, and we are thrilled that his experience will deepen our firm’s art and antiquities practice, nationally and internationally,” stated Marion F. Werkheiser, CHP Founding Partner.
Kline advises clients on a wide variety of art and cultural property matters, including issues of ownership, theft, authenticity, breach of contract, and insurance. Since 1989 he has practiced in litigation, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, and advice and counseling, representing governments, museums, churches, foundations, and families. He also counsels collectors, buyers and sellers, and auction houses to ensure effective art and antiquity transactions. A recognized authority on Holocaust-related art claims, Kline appeared before the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States.
Kline stated, “I am delighted to join the entrepreneurial team at CHP. They were the first firm in the world to offer a legal services, policy advocacy, and business strategy to clients across—but exclusively in—the cultural heritage field. My clients will enjoy deep art law experience as well as wisdom from representing clients who preserve the world’s archaeology, buildings, places, and monuments.”
Kline’s first case in the field was litigating on behalf of the Church and Republic of Cyprus to recover stolen mosaics; the case set precedents in many areas important to art restitution, including choice of law, statutes of limitations and good faith purchaser rules. He also represented the Church of St. Servatii, Quedlinburg, Germany, in recovering world-famous medieval religious treasures stolen in Allied-occupied Germany by an American Army officer and mailed home to Texas in the aftermath of World War II, a case that is now the subject of a documentary film “The Liberators.” He litigated the first US case to establish the standards for determining that a forced sale ordered by the Nazis is equivalent to theft. Kline’s work has been chronicled in a number of books, most recently: Simon Goodman’s “The Orpheus Clock: The search for My Family’s Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis” (Scribner 2015) and Gary Vikan’s “Sacred and Stolen, Confessions of a Museum Director” (Select Books, Inc. 2016).
For fifteen years Kline has taught museum and cultural property law and policy at the George Washington University Museum Studies Program. He is president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, advisor to the Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage, advisory board member of the German-English journal Kunst und Recht (Art and Law), and active on the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Kline writes and speaks frequently on art, cultural heritage, and museum issues.
Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC, headquartered in Washington, DC and with offices in Europe, is a global law, government affairs, and strategy firm that handles issues related to cultural heritage, historic preservation, art and antiquities, and museums.
Contact:
Marion F. Werkheiser
Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC
703.489.6059
2101 L St. NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20037