In a bureaucratic blunder that is as funny as it is tragic, the Dutch municipality of Maashorst appears to have accidentally thrown out a valuable Andy Warhol silk-screen print — along with nearly 50 other artworks.
According to an independent investigation commissioned by the municipality first reported by the New York Times, the pieces likely disappeared during a recent town hall renovation. Officials acknowledged the error last week in a letter to the council, though they admitted the investigation was inconclusive. The chances of recovering the missing works, however, are slim.
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“It’s not likely that the missing artworks will ever be found,” the mayor and aldermen wrote.
Among the casualties was a brightly colored 1985 portrait of former Queen Beatrix from Warhol’s Reigning Queens series — an image familiar enough that, as Amsterdam-based art detective Arthur Brand put it to the Times, “You don’t even have to know anything about art” to recognize it.
Valued between $40,000 and $50,000, the Beatrix print was hardly Warhol’s most expensive in the series. Richard Polsky of Richard Polsky Art Authentication pointed out that a print of Queen Elizabeth II would have cost the municipality closer to $250,000. “They’re lucky they didn’t own ‘Queen Elizabeth,’” he wrote. The most expensive Beatrix silkscreen sold for more than $550,000 back in 2010 at Christie’s Amsterdam.
Officials have not detailed exactly how the art was stored, nor who ultimately authorized its disposal. Hans van der Pas, the mayor of Maashorst, declined to comment on specifics but told local media, “This is not how you handle valuable things. But it did happen, and we regret that.”
There is still a sliver of hope: Brand speculated that someone might have quietly rescued the Warhol from the trash. “I’d be fine with that person keeping it,” he said. “It would be safer with them than with the municipality.”
The incident comes just months after another misadventure involving Warhol’s Reigning Queens series in the Netherlands. In November, thieves used explosives to break into a gallery in the south of the country, making off with four prints. Two were later recovered.
“If this continues,” Brand warned, “we soon won’t have many Warhols of Queen Beatrix left.”