The international law firm said it is adding to its art advisory and related legal capabilities.

Law firm Withers has appointed former Sotheby’s senior figure Mari-Claudia Jiménez as part of its drive to expand art advisory and legal expertise for this area.

Jiménez, who has joined as a partner, will lead Withers’ art and advisory practice in New York. 

Over her career, Jiménez has been an advisor, counselor and advocate for collectors and estates, prominent museums, galleries, and auction houses and has been involved in acquisitions, consignments and litigation. Until recently, she was chairman, president, Americas, and head of global business development for Sotheby's. She worked at the auction house for almost 10 years.

Jiménez’s role in major art sales, included the collection of philanthropist and art patron Emily Fisher Landau, the $922 million Macklowe Collection, the collection of music producer Mo Ostin and celebrity collections such as that of Mr and Mrs Frank Sinatra, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman and the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

In February 2025, she left Sotheby's to form her own legal and art advisory practice, which is being combined into Withers. She was previously a partner in the Art Law Group at Herrick, Feinstein LLP.

In her legal career, Jiménez worked on transactions that reached the public eye, including the sale to the Neue Galerie of Gustav Klimt’s Adele Block-Bauer I, at the time the most expensive painting ever sold (she represented the buyer), the restitution and sale (both privately and at auction) of five masterpieces by Kazimir Malevich worth hundreds of millions of dollars (Jiménez represented the sellers) and the sale of what was at the time the most expensive painting sold at auction, Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, which was part of the roughly $300 million sale of the Estate of Frances Lasker Brody.

“Mari-Claudia counts a remarkable amount of 'firsts' on her CV, including market-topping transactions and significant art disputes which have changed the playing field,” Jay Dinwoodie, CEO of Withers' private client and tax division, said. “This, combined with her experience as a former president of Sotheby's and senior dealmaker, makes her unique in the industry.”