In the hands of Andy Warhol, trash often became a work of art. So perhaps the pop culture icon would not be too upset to know that, in the hands of one Dutch municipality, one of his artworks went the other way and was thrown out with the rubbish.
Maashorst town hall on Thursday confessed that a rare silkscreen print by Warhol, who died in 1987, was among 46 valuable artworks that were “most likely” taken away with the bins during extensive renovation work last year.
“This is not how you treat valuable items,” the mayor, Hans van der Pas, told the public broadcaster NOS. “It is a serious matter when public property, especially art with cultural and historic value, is treated so carelessly … But it happened. We regret that.”
The town hall said in a statement that the works, including a 1980s Warhol silkscreen print of then-Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, were part of a collection from the borough of Uden, which merged with others three years ago to form Maashorst.
Before the reorganisation, an inventory was made of the borough’s collection which was then split up. Some pieces were loaned to a local museum, others placed in the new town hall and some returned to the artists. In the process, 46 went missing.
“It’s most likely that the artworks were accidentally taken away with the rubbish,” Maashorst town hall said in a statement, after a report by an independent investigations agency that it hired to find out what had happened.
The agency concluded there were several reasons why the artworks could have been taken out with the trash – including a complete absence of any policies, procedures or guidelines for “the registration, storage, conservation and security of artworks”.
Many of the artworks were stored in a town hall basement during the renovation work “but were not handled with care”, the agency reported. Several had sustained water and other damage when they were last seen in 2023.
Queen Beatrix was part of Warhol’s 1985 series Reigning Queens, a series of 16 colourful prints of four monarchs: Elizabeth II of England, Beatrix of the Netherlands, Margrethe II of Denmark and Ntombi Twala of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).
The artist based the silkscreens on the queens’ official state portraits, choosing them because they were often mass-produced, including on stamps and currency. Maashorst said it was unlikely the missing artworks would ever be recovered.