Spain's most important modern art museum has confessed it has lost a 38-tonne sculpture by the prestigious American artist Richard Serra.The valuable artwork, Equal-Parallel/Guernica-Bengasi, was commissioned by the Reina Sofia museum in 1986, and displayed there until 1990.
The museum admitted on Wednesday that the last document it had relating to the piece and the payments made for its storage was dated 1992.
The four 1.5-metre-wide blocks of solid metal Serra used for the sculpture were removed from exhibition in 1990 and, as they were too big and heavy to keep on site, were sent to a private storage depot.
When the museum's new director, Ana Martinez, told her staff to produce an inventory last year, they discovered that the storage company had gone into receivership in 1998 and the blocks had disappeared. The owner of the company said he did not know where the sculpture had gone.
A Spanish newspaper suggested the work may have been sold as scrap or melted down by somebody who did not realise its artistic value. Ms Martinez, however, still hopes that the piece might be found.