Museum discovers loss of 38-tonne sculpture by US artist Serra

[emad]

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Thursday January 19, 2006
The Guardian


Spain's most important modern art museum yesterday admitted it had lost a 38-tonne sculpture by the prestigious American artist Richard Serra. The valuable sculpture, titled Equal-Parallel/ Guernica-Bengasi, was commissioned from the artist by Madrid's Reina Sofía modern art museum in 1986, and was displayed there until 1990.

The museum admitted yesterday that the last document it had relating to the piece and the payments made for its storage was dated 1992.

The four blocks of metal Serra used for the sculpture were cleared away in 1990 and, as they were too big and heavy to keep at the Reina Sofía, were sent to a private storage depot in Madrid, the museum said yesterday.

When new Reina Sofía director Ana Martínez ordered her staff to produce an inventory last year, they discovered that the storage company had gone into receivership in 1998. The four 1.5m-wide blocks of solid metal that made up the Serra sculpture had disappeared.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,1689665,00.html

QUE Sera sera, ....