The famous Prado museum in Madrid, one of the biggest art galleries in the world, has reportedly managed to misplace 885 artworks, according to the Spanish Audit Court.
The number of missing pieces of art was even a bit higher a few years ago, but the museum managed to locate a number of them, some of which were on loan to other institutions.
The museum suspects that many of the missing items, possibly 500 or so, have simply been lost or destroyed by fire or in wars over a long period. However, this suspicion cannot be factually proven and therefore the items cannot be taken off the inventory.
It is thought that a significant portion of the missing artwork might relate to the Trinidad Museum collection, created with art obtained from the expropriation of Catholic Church property during the period 1835 to 1837. The Trinidad and Prado museums merged their collections in 1872 and it is thought that some of the items could simply have been left behind.
Obviously no-one was keeping an eye on things at that time, or since by the sounds of it.
The Audit Court criticised the lack of periodic reporting on the state of art collections and insists that the museum continues to search for the misplaced items.
It also criticises the high number of loans of works to other centres and institutions, which it says makes monitoring extremely difficult.
The Audit Court recognises, however, that the museum lacks the significant human resources to properly manage the artworks and acknowledges that much of the artwork disappeared so long ago that nobody can be held accountable for the loss.
During 2012, the Prado museum participated in 15 national exhibitions, sent 176 artworks to other centres, lent 288 pieces for foreign exhibitions and used 154 works as part of a travelling art show. Whether everything came back or not we don’t know.
Smaller museums, municipal facilities and other centres are always taking in or loaning out various items, particularly historical artefacts, and it is not uncommon for these to be misplaced. In some cases the items remain forgotten for a very long time and ownership becomes disputed.
The Prado does apparently have an inventory of around 28,000 items of one sort or another to try and control and there are plans for these to be photographed and a computer application developed to manage them properly.
To be fair, many people experience difficulty maintaining control over the location of a bunch of keys and a mobile phone, so keeping tabs on the whereabouts of 28,000 items is a mammoth task.