How Much Faith Can We Put in Public Collections?

This is a relatively old story from a few weeks ago about a German public collection that is unable to locate 500 works of art it acquired with public funds. As a local story, it’s not that interesting. In the context of the current suspicions about private art collectors, it should serve as a reminder that public institutions have their fair share of failures (apologies for the awkward Google translation):

The State Enterprise “Property and Construction Baden-Württemberg” serves about 3,500 works of art that have been cataloged. Since 2010, works of art were acquired worth two million euros. Since 2005, all existing and add purchased works of art are stored in a database. Employees of Auditors analyzed the database and have now found that 500 works of art are no longer discoverable.

Among them are works of classical modernism, about the woodcut “Sailboats” from 1919 by Lyonel Feininger . The lithograph “Signes et Météores” by Joan Miró has been lost. Both artworks have been purchased in the early sixties for the University of Stuttgart. According to research by the Court of the administration of the university is not even known when the loss or even the theft of works of art is first noticed.

Court: Baden-Württemberg 500 missing works of famous artists (FAZ)