Dutch town hall says it may have accidentally thrown out Andy Warhol work

Former Dutch queen Princess Beatrix opens the exhibition "Queens by Andy Warhol" at a museum in the Netherlands in October 2024. (Patrick van Katwijk/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Though Andy Warhol famously created art from garbage cans, he may not have expected his works to end up in the trash.

But that is exactly where officials at a Dutch town hall think one of his silkscreen prints may have landed, after it was accidentally disposed of with the “bulky waste.”

The 1980s print depicting the Netherlands’ then-Queen Beatrix in Warhol’s famous pop art style disappeared when the art collection was being reorganized, according to a statement issued by Maashorst municipality on Thursday after it commissioned an independent agency to investigate.

The local authority said it doesn’t expect to find the artworks.

As well as the Warhol print, 45 other works were lost in the same way, CNN affiliate NOS reported.

They were all stored in the town hall’s basement while the building was being renovated, but they were left unprotected, moved to different places and suffered water damage after a leak in 2023, NOS reported.

It is unclear precisely how the lapse happened, and which officials were responsible for throwing out the works, which were valued at around 22,000 euros (US$25,000) in total, NOS added.

The local authority discovered that the artworks were missing in November and reported their disappearance to the police, but it did not act quickly enough, the report investigating the incident concluded, according to NOS.

This is not the first time that an artwork has been accidentally thrown away. In October, an elevator technician working at a museum elsewhere in the Netherlands mistakenly threw away a piece of artwork made to look like two empty beer cans.

However, the cans were later recovered from a trash bag, both still intact. They were cleaned and then displayed on a traditional plinth at the museum entrance.

By Issy Ronald and Catherine Nicholls, CNN