[MSN] The disappearance of a 38-ton metal sculpture, last exhibited in Spain's greatest modern art museum, has mystified police.

Tue Jul 11 10:30:23 CEST 2006

Anyone seen our missing 38-ton sculpture?
By Fiona Govan in Madrid

(Filed: 11/07/2006)

The disappearance of a 38-ton metal sculpture, last exhibited in Spain's
greatest modern art museum, has mystified police.

The work by the American artist Richard Serra was commissioned in 1986 by
Madrid's Reina Sofia museum, where it was displayed for five years before
being removed and placed in storage.

This year the museum admitted losing track of the work,
Equal-Parallel/Guernica-Bengasi, for which the culture ministry paid about
£150,000.

Records revealed that the huge piece, comprising four solid steel blocks,
was last seen in 1995 when it was being stored in the open air on an
industrial estate in a suburb of Madrid. 

Eight years later the labour ministry chose the plot to construct a building
to house new archives. The sculpture was never heard of again.

A police investigation concluded that theft was implausible. The piece,
which had taken five cranes to move, was thought to be too awkward to
handle, and it was worth almost nothing.

It was thought the artwork had not been moved but was incorporated into the
foundations or grounds of the ministry. 

Last week police excavated an area of garden where metal detectors had
discovered the presence of a large object. But it turned out to be part of a
collapsed high-tension electrical tower.

"We were very disappointed," a senior police official said. "We thought that
we had found the piece, but it was just scrap metal."

Carmen Gimenez, the curator at the Reina Sofia, said the museum had
maintained good relations with the artist despite mislaying his work.

"Serra knows that the storage of his work is complicated," she said.

"He is behaving like a gentleman and has agreed to remake the piece should
it not be found."

4 May 2002[Arts]: The man of steel re-shaping centuries of sculpture 

arts.telegraph