$25,000 down the drain: The city hall of this city admits to accidentally throwing away Andy Warhol artworks

A handful of artworks, including a limited edition silkscreen by Andy Warhol, went missing last year in the Netherlands and are now believed to have “most likely ended up in the trash alongside bulky waste.” The incident occurred during an administrative reorganization and renovation of a town hall in the southern part of the country, and recovery of the pieces is not expected.

Valuable artworks end up in the trash

An independent investigation commissioned by the municipality of Maashorst, located in the southern Netherlands, concluded that the artworks—among them a silkscreen of Princess Beatrix by Andy Warhol—were “likely accidentally discarded with bulky waste” amid the territorial reorganization of the Uden and Landerd municipalities. These two areas were merged to form Maashorst, located in North Brabant, in January 2022.

Many of the artworks had been put into storage in a basement during the renovation work “but were not handled with care”, the agency reported. It was noted that a number of them had sustained water damage when they were last seen in 2023.

“The artworks are not expected to be recovered. The city council deeply regrets this situation (…) and takes full responsibility,” the Maashorst City Council stated on Thursday in an official release. The council noted that the report was received mid-month but will not be made public to safeguard the privacy of those interviewed during the investigation.

The investigative agency BING (Office for the Integrity of Dutch Municipalities) identified several major failures in the management and preservation of Uden’s municipal heritage, which led to the artworks being mistakenly discarded late last year.

The council has pledged to promptly implement specific measures recommended by BING to prevent a similar incident from happening again. These measures include conducting an appraisal of the artworks currently owned by the municipality and establishing proper procedures and guidelines to ensure thorough documentation, secure storage, careful transportation, and enhanced overall protection of the art collection.

Warhol’s Queens

The silkscreen print was part of the late artist’s Reigning Queens by Andy Warhol series created in 1985 - a set of 16 silkscreen prints of the only reigning queens in the world at the time, including four portraits of the then Queen Beatrix (she abdicated in favour of King Willem Alexander in 2013). The Queen Beatrix print is valued between $25,000 and $30,000.

Reigning Queens only includes queens who assumed the throne by birthright, not through marriage. The three other queens in the collection were Queen Elizabeth II (United Kingdom), Queen Margrethe II (Denmark) and Queen Ntfombi Twala (Swaziland).

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