The Dutch Government Can't Find Its Missing Art

Written by Kees Bakker Tuesday, 07 February 2012 22:31

Amsterdam, NL - The Dutch government has lost thousands of works from its own collection. According to free newspaper Metro, the value of the misplaced’ art runs into the millions of euros. In the past few years, the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed National Cultural Heritage Service has conducted a search operation at ministries, museums, local councils and provinces. Metro writes that the results have been disappointing so far. The missing works include paintings by 17th century painters Isaac van Ostade and Pieter Molyn, as well as by members of the Cobra movement of the late 1940s. Sculptures, pieces of antique furniture and Ming dynasty vases have also gone missing.

COBRA was formed by Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn, and Joseph Noiret on the 8th November 1948 in the Café Notre-Dame, Paris, with the signing of a manifesto, "La Cause Était Entendue" (The Case Was Settled), drawn up by Dotremont. Formed with a unifying doctrine of complete freedom of colour and form, as well as antipathy towards surrealism, the artists also shared an interest in modernism. Their working method was based on spontaneity and experiment, and they drew their inspiration in particular from children’s drawings, from primitive art forms and from the work of Paul Klee and Joan Miró.

In many cases, the missing objects were on loan to ministries and local councils to decorate public buildings. Quite often, nobody knows what happened next. The Works may have been stolen, gone missing during a removal or given to an official.

The culture minister Ronald Plasterk wrote in March 2007 that only 200 out of a Total of 3,000 missing Works of art had been recovered. Almost no lost works were recovered in the past three years. However, the government has tightened the rules for giving works of art on loan.  The government agency responsible for the administration of publicly owned art says it assumes a large number of the missing works will never be recovered.

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