Maashorst town hall mistakenly throws away Andy Warhol artwork

The municipality of Maashorst in the south of the Netherlands has admitted that 46 artworks once housed in the town hall “probably” ended up being thrown out with the bulky waste during a renovation. Among the missing pieces was an Andy Warhol silkscreen print. 

Dutch municipality accidentally throws out Andy Warhol painting

Maashorst, which was formed when the municipalities of Landerd and Uden merged in 2022, had filed a report with the police over the loss of the artworks, which were originally part of the Uden municipality’s art collection, and hired an independent research firm to investigate.

The 46 missing artworks were by various artists, and included a silkscreen print of Princess Beatrix by the famous artist Andy Warhol, part of his 1985 series Reigning Queens. The missing pieces are estimated to be worth around 22.000 euros. 

The firm concluded that the artworks had “most likely” ended up in the tip, Omroep Brabant reports. This probably happened during a renovation of the town hall in Uden. The works of art were said to be not well looked-after, with many of them being stored in wheelie bins in the basement. When the Andy Warhol print was last seen in September 2023, it had sustained water damage. 

Maashorst blames poor administration for loss of artworks

The artworks are now presumed permanently lost, something the investigation put down to improper storage practices, poor planning, and a series of administrative failures. No one was put in charge of safeguarding the art, and the town hall had no formal policies for handling, registering, conserving and storing the pieces.

“This is not how you treat valuable items,” the mayor, Hans van der Pas, told 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.”