French customs on the border with Switzerland donated an artwork by Marc Chagall to a nearby museum, which it had seized 20 years ago and then forgotten.
I have been observing how the art market rewards patience, and few stories illustrate it better than that of L’Acrobate au violon, an engraving by Marc Chagall that has just emerged from administrative oblivion. The piece, seized in 2006 by the French customs when two private individuals tried to illegally remove it to Switzerland without export certificates, has remained twenty years in a warehouse, victim of the weight of the bureaucracy. Last…