Sometimes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
But in one recent bureaucratic snafu, a known treasure most likely ended up in the trash.
The southern Dutch municipality of Maashorst appears to have mistakenly thrown out a valuable silk-screen print of former Queen Beatrix by Andy Warhol, along with nearly 50 other works of art, according to an independent investigation ordered by the municipality.
The works of art had probably gone missing after a renovation of the town hall, Maashorst officials said in a statement.
But the investigation was not entirely conclusive, and officials say they may never be certain what had happened to the art.
“It’s not likely that the missing art works will ever be found,” the mayor and aldermen of the municipality wrote in a letter to the council last week.
The missing Warhol print was part of his 1985 “Reigning Queens” series. Besides Beatrix, who was the Dutch monarch from 1980 until her abdication in 2013, the series also depicts Queen Elizabeth II of England, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Ntombi Twala of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).
The Queen Beatrix print that was thrown away is worth $40,000 to $50,000, according to Richard Polsky of Richard Polsky Art Authentication. “They’re lucky they didn’t own ‘Queen Elizabeth,’” he wrote in an email, “which is worth approximately $250,000!”
Arthur Brand, an independent art detective in Amsterdam, called the loss of the artwork tragic and said it was emblematic of the larger problem of organizations and governments having poor oversight of their art collections.
In some cases, that can invite theft, Mr. Brand said. In this case, though, it was carelessness.
“Doesn’t everyone recognize that as a Warhol?” Mr. Brand said in a phone interview. “You don’t even have to know anything about art, you can see that right away.”
It’s unclear how the works were stored and who was ultimately responsible for throwing them away. Hans van der Pas, the mayor of Maashorst, declined to comment directly on the issue but expressed his dismay about the situation to the local media last week.
“This is not how you handle valuable things,” he told a local broadcaster. “But it did happen, and we regret that.”
The print is also hard to miss. Not only is it brightly colored, and a depiction of a former monarch who’d be recognizable to anyone working in the municipality, it’s also fairly large. Many of the “Reigning Queens” prints are about 40 by 31 inches.
Mr. Brand, the art detective, said he was holding out hope that somebody perhaps saved the portrait.
“I hope someone took it,” he said. “I’d be fine with that person keeping it, because that way the print is safer than with the municipality itself.”
It’s not the first mishap involving Mr. Warhol’s “Reigning Queens” portfolio in the Netherlands. In November, thieves used explosives to blow up a door to a gallery in a small town in the south of the country and stole four prints in the same series. Two of them were later recovered, according to the Dutch broadcaster NOS.
“If this continues,” Mr. Brand said, “we soon won’t have many Warhols of Queen Beatrix left.”
