An Andy Warhol “Mao” screenprint has been reported missing from a vault at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California.
The 1972 print depicts Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Zedong, and was donated to Orange Coast College in September 2020. It had been stored in a vault at the Frank M. Doyle Art Pavilion and was discovered missing on March 13.
“We’re just hoping that we can find it,” Doug Bennet, executive director of the Orange County College Foundation, told the Southern California News Group, “that perhaps there’s a misunderstanding or someone took it to hang in their office or something like that.”
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Bennet said that Orange Coast College’s Campus Public Safety department was investigating and that school officials had filed a report with local police.
Costa Mesa police spokesperson Roxi Fyad confirmed to ARTnews a report was filed for a missing Andy Warhol print on March 20 and that an investigation had begun.
While the missing work stored at Orange Coast College was a print, the international market value of Warhol’s paintings from the series are considerable at auction, with one sold for $47.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2015.
Bennet and the Orange County College Foundation did not respond to press inquiries from ARTnews.
News of the missing print was first reported by the Southern California News Group.