For most dealers and collectors, concerns over who owns the title to an object are a relatively new burden. The issue is complex because gaps in provenance are legendary; the ownership records of many works are sketchy and incomplete. Until the last few decades, the art world was small and insular, and many sealed their deals with a simple handshake. Brandishing a battered notebook with handwritten notes on works he purchased from 1958 through the late 1980s, Eisenberg says that when he first started buying antiquities he encountered few, if any, questions about ownership.

Over the centuries, art historians have refined their ways and means to trace a work’s provenance—its trajectory from the hand of the artist to a dealer, collector and, perhaps, museum. Using documents, catalogs, letters and even sales slips, sleuthing historians have uncovered art that might have followed an unusual path—such as those pieces that are stashed away in an attic or handed down to a collector’s offspring with little fanfare. Provenance comes into play when there are disputes about a work’s authenticity, attribution or legal title.

Raiders of the Lost Art
Over the past few years, however, the issue of artwork title has taken on new resonance and ignited serious debate. Perhaps the most incendiary concerns revolve around renewed efforts to locate the rightful owners—or their heirs—of hundreds of thousands of works of art that were lost during World War II, when the Nazis plundered Europe’s museums and private collections. An heir who can prove that a particular work was stolen between 1933 and 1945 has a right to try to reclaim the piece—even if a collector or museum has subsequently purchased the work in good faith.

Some criteria fairly scream “potential problem.” Art that changed hands between 1933 and 1945, or antiquities purported to be from Iraq, Afghanistan, Italy or Greece, merit suspicion until we can prove otherwise.

Another vexing problem is the flood of antiquities hitting the market since the Gulf War and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. A number of countries—notably China, Iran, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Italy and Turkey—have instituted aggressive measures to try to curb illegal exports of their cultural patrimony, sometimes referred to as found-in-the-ground laws. Italy has even formed a police unit dedicated to hunting down and stopping the illegal export of artwork. The United States also has imposed stricter rules, based on agreements with these countries and our own criminal laws against violating import restrictions under treaties.

One of the more infamous import restriction cases involved that of Fred Schultz, not just a prominent Manhattan dealer, but a power broker in the antiquities world. He had been the president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, and had advised the government on heritage policy. In 2003, Schultz was sent to jail for his role in selling ancient Egyptian antiquities in violation of an Egyptian law declaring state ownership of any antiquity found on that country’s soil after 1983. He is currently serving a 33-month federal prison sentence at Fort Dix, N.J.

In October, the FBI and U.S. marshals appeared at the Chicago home of Marilynn Alsdorf to claim custody of the 1922 Picasso painting Femme en Blanc, now valued at $10 million. Alsdorf and her late husband bought the painting in Paris in 1975 for a mere $375,000. In the wake of a rightful ownership suit, she moved the painting from her house in Los Angeles, a violation of laws against knowingly transporting stolen goods across state lines, and the government has now ordered her to keep it in a safe until the court determines the proper owner. The plaintiff, Thomas Benningson, is the grandson of a German Jewish collector, Carlota Landsberg, who purchased the painting in the 1920s but stored it during the war years at a Paris art dealership that the Nazis allegedly sacked. In general, such cases are often difficult to resolve, says Benningson’s lawyer, Randol Schoenberg of Los Angeles, who specializes in disputes over looted art. “Evidence,” he notes, “can be inconclusive because of gaps in provenance, and nobody wants to make a mistake.”