A small Dutch municipality in the south of the country has admitted that 46 works of art, including a portrait of the former Dutch queen painted by Andy Warhol, were "most likely" accidentally thrown away during a recent renovation.
A 1980s portrait worth around 150.000 euros went missing during renovation work at the town hall in 2024, Mahorts municipality officials said.
The investigation showed that the works were stored in the basement during the works, but the lack of guidelines on how to store them may have caused the artwork to be thrown in the trash.
"That's not how you treat valuable things, but it happened and we're sorry about it," Hans der Pas, the mayor, told public broadcaster Omrop Brabant.
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Some artworks were stored in wheeled bins in the basement and were "not handled carefully," local newspaper Algemene Dagblad reported, citing investigators' reports.
"Ownership was not properly established, nor was it known how to handle the items during renovations, and nothing was done when it was noticed that the artworks were missing," the investigator concluded.
This was further compounded by the lack of guidelines for the registration, inventory, disposal, conservation and security of these works of art.
According to local media, 46 works of art, worth around 22.000 euros, were thrown away, and the municipality of Mašorst says there is little chance they will ever be found.
Beatrix was Queen of the Netherlands from 1980 until she abdicated in 2013, when she was succeeded by her son, King Willem-Alexander.
Her portrait was part of Warhol's "Reigning Queens" series.
It consisted of 16 works on silk by four queens, including others, the late British Queen Elizabeth II, Margarethe II, Queen of Denmark until her abdication in 2023, and Ntombi Tvale from Eswatini, formerly Swaziland.
Warhol, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, created a series of portraits in 1985, two years before his death.
In November 2024, thieves stole four works from Warhol's Queens series from a gallery in MPV in the Dutch province of North Brabant.
While fleeing from the police, they left behind two paintings - portraits of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Ntombi Tfwala of Eswatini, since they couldn't fit in the car.
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