Etruscan 'Discus Thrower'. Stolen from a dealer in Switzerland in 1988 and recovered in the US by ALR in 1997. All six were recovered. Increasingly, the steps a purchaser takes to determine the status of an acquisition are important when or if a question arises regarding the legal ownership of a work of art. This 'due diligence', as it is labelled, may be difficult for the purchaser, relying solely on their own knowledge or memory.
Research can help and plays a crucial role in establishing the status of a work.
However, it may be only the first step. With the developments in the past decades of new technology, most visibly that in the field of computers, and the advent of the much heralded 'information age', the collector, the gallery and the museum, as well as law enforcement agencies, have new tools at their disposal to assist them in exercising their responsibility of 'due diligence'. Among those tools available to the purchaser are databases of stolen and missing works of art like the Art Loss Register. Some such databases or compilations of stolen works have existed for decades, most notably that maintained by Interpol. With respect to the ALR database, one difference is that, unlike the information gathered by many law enforcement agencies, the ALR database is available for consultation by the public.