Both Caitlin Haskell and Jennifer Cohen had no idea what to do. Both curators were studying Salvador Dal's "Visions of Eternity," a 1936 painting that has been in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection since the late '80s, for the first Salvador Dal exhibition ever mounted there. In "Visions of Eternity," a vertical composition displays a mysterious terrain with a blue ombre, a solitary arch to the viewer's left, a shadowy humanoid figure seated on top of the arch, and a pair of beans in the foreground.

It was becoming increasingly suspicious, Haskell and Cohen said on a conference call, because the picture didn't fit in with Dali's other work from that time.