Although Andy Warhol was famous for creating art from trash crates, he might not expect his works to end in the trash.
But that is exactly where the employees of a Dutch City Council think one of their serigraphs may have stopped after being accidentally lying out with the “bulky waste.”
The engraving of the 80s, which portrays the then Queen Beatriz of the Netherlands in Warhol’s famous pop art style, disappeared when the art collection was being reorganized, according to a statement issued by Maashorst municipality on Thursday after commissioning an investigation with an independent agency.
The municipality said it does not expect to find the works of art.
In addition to Warhol’s engraving, 45 other works were lost in the same way, NOS, CNN branch reported.
The works were all stored in the city hall while the building was being renewed, but were left unprotected, changed to different places and suffered damage caused by water after an escape in 2023, NOS said.
It is not known exactly how the lapse happened and that employees were responsible for lying off the works, evaluated in about 22,000 euros ($ 25,000) in total, added NOS.
The local authority detected the disappearance of the works in November and reported its disappearance to the police, but did not act with the necessary speed, concluded the investigation report of the incident, according to NOS.
This is not the first time a work of art has been lying out accidentally. In October, a coach of elevators who worked in a other place in the locals of the Netherlands laid out, mistakenly, a work of art made to look two cans of empty beer.
However, the cans were later recovered from a garbage bag, both still intact. They were clean and then exposed in a traditional pedestal at the museum entrance.
