Robert M. Edsel

Robert M. Edsel is the author of the non-fiction book, Rescuing Da Vinci, co-producer of the documentary film, The Rape of Europa, and Founder and President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.

Mr. Edsel was formerly a nationally ranked tennis player. In 1981, Mr. Edsel began his business career in oil and gas exploration. His company, Gemini Exploration pioneered the use of horizontal drilling technology throughout the early 1990s. Gemini Exploration grew from a company with eight employees to almost 100. By 1995, Gemini had become the second most active driller of horizontal wells in the United States. In 1995, Edsel sold the company’s assets to Union Pacific Resources Company. The following year he moved to Europe with his family.

While in Florence, he developed a great passion for art and architecture and became curious as to how so many of the monuments and great works of art survived the thefts and devastation of World War II. What began as a question evolved into an impassioned journey to unravel the secrets and heroics of the Monuments Men, the unsung heroes who saved the world’s greatest art and cultural treasures for the benefit of civilization. By 2001, that journey had become a full-time job. Mr. Edsel has dedicated the last six years of his life to painstaking and far-reaching research about the Monuments Men, which first culminated in the publishing of his book Rescuing Da Vinci, a detailed historical account which includes 460 photographs. In addition to Rescuing Da Vinci, Mr. Edsel is the co-producer of the documentary film, The Rape of Europa, based on the award winning book of the same name by scholar Lynn Nicholas.

Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, (www.monumentsmenfoundation.org), a not-for-profit entity, received the 2007 National Humanities Medal.

Patty Gerstenblith

Patty Gerstenblith is Professor of Law at DePaul University and director of its Center for Art and Cultural Heritage Law. She is founding President of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation and was appointed by President Clinton to serve as a public representative on the President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee in the U.S. Department of State (2000-03). She has also been co-chair of the ABA’s International Cultural Property Committee (2002-06) and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Cultural Property (1995-2002). Her most recent articles include “Controlling the International Market in Antiquities: Reducing the Harm, Preserving the Past”, published in the Chicago Journal of International Law, “Collecting Antiquities in the International Market: Philosophy, Law and Heritage”, published in the 2007 Cultural Property Yearbook, and “From Bamiyan to Baghdad: Warfare and the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at the Beginning of the 21st Century”, published in the Georgetown Journal of International Law. She is the author of the books, Art, Cultural Heritage and the Law, and Iraq Beyond the Headlines: History, Archaeology and War (co-author). She received her J.D. from Northwestern University and Ph.D. in Art History and Anthropology from Harvard University.

Richard B. Jackson

Dick Jackson is the Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters. He is a retired Army Colonel, with over 30 years experience as an Infantry Officer and Judge Advocate (JAG). His most prominent positions in the Army included: Deputy Staff Judge Advocate at the U.S. Atlantic Command; Chair of the International Law Department at the Army JAG School; Staff Judge Advocate at the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the 25th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division North in Bosnia, and the U.S. Army, Pacific; and Legal Advisor at the NATO Joint Forces Command, in Naples, Italy. COL (Ret) Jackson has extensive operational law experience in expeditionary operations in Panama, Haiti, the Balkans, and Iraq. He has written extensively on the Law of War in professional publications and lectured at seminars on the subject all over the world.

Thomas R. Kline

Thomas R. Kline, partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Andrews Kurth LLP, has since 1989 represented governments, museums, churches, foundations, and families, including Holocaust survivors and heirs, in recovering stolen art appearing in the United States. He also represents an American museum and U.S. collectors in responding to claims and generally handles a wide variety of art and cultural property litigation and advice matters. Mr. Kline serves on the Board of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, co-teaches a seminar on Cultural Property at the George Washington University, Museum Studies Program, and writes and speaks frequently on art, museum and cultural property issues including appearing in 1999 before the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. For his work on behalf of German cultural institutions, Mr. Kline was awarded the Officers Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Lynn H. Nicholas

Lynn Nicholas is an independent researcher in the area of Nazi era social and cultural policy. Educated in the United States, Spain and England, she received her BA from Oxford University. After her return to this country she worked for a time at the National Galley of Art. Her first book, The Rape of Europa, on the displacement of cultural assets in World War II and their recovery by the “monuments men”, was published in 1994 and received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995. Mrs. Nicholas has served as an expert witness and testified before Congress on restitution issues. She was a presenter at the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets at the State Department in 1998. She has lectured at many museums and universities both here and abroad and participated frequently in international symposia related to the wartime fate of works of art. The book is the basis for a motion picture of the same title, produced by Actual Films of San Franciso and co-produced by Robert Edsel.  In 2005 she published her second book, Cruel World, which describes the experiences of children and families in Nazi controlled Europe. She has been awarded the Legion d’Honneur by France and the Amicus Poloniae by Poland. She and her husband live in Washington, DC.

W. Hays Parks

W. Hays Parks entered federal service in 1963 as a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps. He served in the Republic of Viet Nam (1968-1969) as an infantry officer and senior prosecuting attorney for the First Marine Division. Subsequent military assignments included service as the Marine Corps Representative at The Judge Advocate General’s School, U.S. Army, congressional liaison officer for the Secretary of the Navy, and as Head, Law of War Branch, Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy. Mr. Parks was the Special Assistant to The Judge Advocate General of the Army for Law of War Matters from 1979 to 2003. He was a legal adviser for the 1986 air strike against terrorist-related targets in Libya, and had primary responsibility for the investigation of Iraqi war crimes during its 1990-1991 occupation of Kuwait. He has served as a United States representative for law of war negotiations in New York, Geneva, The Hague and Vienna. He joined the Office of General Counsel, Department of Defense, in August 2003.

Mr. Parks occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the Naval War College for academic year 1984-1985. In 1987 he was a staff member on the Presidential Commission established to examine alleged security breaches in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. In 1989 he prepared the U.S. Government’s legal opinion defining assassination. He has testified as an expert witness in cases against terrorists in the United States and Canada. A retired colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, he earned Navy-Marine Corps, Canadian and British Parachutist wings, U.S. Army Master Parachutist wings, and 82nd Airborne Centurion wings during his military career. Mr. Parks has lectured on the law affecting military operations at the National, Army, Air Force and Naval War Colleges; the military staff colleges; and other military schools and units. An adjunct professor of international law at the American University School of Law, he has published articles in a variety of military and legal journals. In 2001 he became the sixth person in the history of the United States Special Operations Command to receive that command’s top civilian award, the U.S. Special Operations Command Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. In 2006 he was awarded the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Major General William F. Garrison Award for his lifetime legal support to U.S. Special Operations Forces.

András J. Riedlmayer

András Riedlmayer directs the Documentation Center of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University’s Fine Arts Library. A specialist in the history and culture of the Balkans, he has spent the past decade and a half documenting the destruction of cultural heritage during the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-95) and in Kosovo (1998-99). He has testified about his findings as an expert witness before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, and before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The author of more than 40 articles published in scholarly and professional journals and edited volumes, in five languages, he currently serves as president of the Turkish Studies Association.

John Malcolm Russell

John Malcolm Russell teaches the art and archaeology of the ancient Middle East and Egypt at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He is author of numerous articles and four books on ancient Assyria, one of which, The Final Sack of Nineveh (Yale), investigates the destruction of Sennacherib's palace in Iraq by looters in the 1990’s. Professor Russell has conducted archaeological excavations at Nineveh, Iraq, and Tell Ahmar, Syria. In 2003-2004 he served with the Coalition Provisional Authority as an advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, Iraq, where he focused on renovating the Iraq Museum and protecting archaeological sites.

Corine Wegener

Corine Wegener is an Associate Curator of Decorative Arts at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and a retired major with 21 years of service in the U.S. Army Reserve. Wegener’s last assignment was in Baghdad, Iraq as the Arts, Monuments, and Archives Officer for the 352nd Civil Affairs Command, where her duties included assisting the Iraq National Museum after the looting in April 2003 and acting as military liaison to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture. Wegener is also founder and president of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, a non-profit organization committed to the protection of cultural property worldwide during armed conflict. For her work with the Blue Shield, Ms. Wegener was awarded the 2007 ICOM-US International Service Citation. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and has M.A.s in Political Science and Art History from the University of Kansas.