Sam Berkovitz frequently gets calls from people asking him to appraise paintings of mysterious provenance they've found in attics and at flea markets.

	"The New Dress" by Roy Hilton, the painting that disappeared from the Pittsburgh Public Schools art collection years ago, recently resurfaced when someone brought it to Concept Art Gallery in Edgewood. Click photo for larger image.

Usually, they don't turn out to be Picassos or Rembrandts. But when a customer walked into Berkovitz's Concept Art Gallery in Edgewood April 2 with a painting he'd bought for $28 at a yard sale, Mr. Berkovitz felt a rush of excitement when he realized the work was by Roy Hilton, an important 20th-century Western Pennsylvania artist, and worth probably about $10,000.

When Mr. Berkovitz looked on the back of the painting, however, he was even more surprised to discover a label reading "100 Friends of Art," which was a local organization founded in 1916 to donate art to the Pittsburgh Public Schools. That meant the painting's owner was the school district, not Mr. Berkovitz's customer, who was out $28.

Mr. Berkovitz contacted district officials who recovered the painting a few days later. He declined to identify the person who brought the painting into his art gallery.

"Somehow along the line, the painting disappeared," Mr. Berkovitz said -- as has been the case over the years with a few other pieces in the school district's collection.

Mr. Hilton's "The New Dress," a colorful painting of a woman cutting cloth to make a frock, has been returned to the district's headquarters in Oakland and will soon be hanging in a classroom or a school hallway for students to enjoy, said Chris Berdnik, the district's finance director.

Information about the painting will be posted on an in-house school district Web site that allows teachers to request artworks for their schools.

"The New Dress" was donated by 100 Friends of Art in 1934, and for years hung in what is now Milliones Middle School in the Hill District. How it vanished is unclear, but Mr. Berdnik said the matter is under investigation.

"All we know is Sam got the piece to us, and we're thrilled to recover it," said Mr. Berdnik.

Each year, 100 Friends of Art -- known today simply as "Friends of Art" -- donates several thousand dollars' worth of art to the city schools, and last summer, it provided an intern's services to catalog the collection, which contains about 1,400 pieces of varying quality.

Some long-missing pieces were found "right under our noses," Mr. Berdnik said, in boiler rooms or closets. About 140 pieces remain unaccounted for. The rest have been tagged and inventoried, and digitalized images of them are on the school district's Web site at www.pps.k12.pa.us/OperationsOffice/Finance/WorksofArtandHistoricalTreasures.asp.

The last formal appraisal, in 1996, estimated the collection's worth at $3 million to $4 million. Today, school officials feel appropriate security measures are in place to protect it.

"We could lock the paintings up, but that completely defeats the purpose of having beautiful local works of art of significant interest in our schools that are donated on behalf of the children," said Mr. Berdnik.

David Wilkins, a Friends of Art board member, said the group was delighted to hear of the re-emergence of "The New Dress." And while security is a concern, "we don't want these things to hang in the principal's office," he said. "We want them to be where they can be seen."

Mr. Hilton was born in Massachusetts in 1891, and moved to Pittsburgh in 1928 to teach at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. As a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, he became a regular exhibitor in the group's annual shows and at the Carnegie International.

He could best be described as an "American scene" painter, whose earlier works followed the social realism of Thomas Hart Benton, but with more urban themes, said Mr. Berkovitz.

As time went on, his work became increasingly stylized as Mr. Hilton became more influenced by modern art.

Mr. Hilton's pieces have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Corcoran Gallery of Art, among others.

Mr. Berkovitz said he's sold some Hilton paintings to museums and collections but that his work is hard to find.

"I appraise Picasso etchings fairly regularly. They can almost be run of the mill. I was more excited to see the Hilton work because it's so rare to come across his paintings," he said.