The scene is the invitation-only preview of the European Fine Art Fair, colloquially known as TEFAF, in New York in May. A savvy American collector who has known his way around the art world for decades is admiring a headless torso, gracefully chiseled in marble. All that’s left of the statue’s arms is a rough chunk above the right buttock, believed to be the remnant of a hand. The dealer, an elegant Parisian, carefully rotates the millennia-old figure on its turntable pedestal. “We have photographs of it before 1970,” he rushes to tell the collector—a claim that might sound like a non sequitur to the uninitiated but has become (faulty) shorthand in the antiquities trade for “legal to sell." After a recent barrage of headlines about archaeological artifacts seized from humiliated collectors and museums, dealers criminally indicted for trading in smuggled goods, and countries of origin agitating for the return of..
