Four works at the Assemblée Nationale in Paris have disappeared from the walls.
The art was pronounced missing from the French parliament at the end of last year, when an annual check through the holdings revealed that paintings by several artists had been removed from their recorded positions on various office walls. Authorities looking for the works for the first few months of the year turned up nothing, ultimately declaring them lost. “Searches carried out up until now have not led us to finding them,” a spokesperson said in a story from The Guardian. The missing trove includes work by the Greek artist Takis, and French artists Hervé Télémaque and Richard Texier, as well as another artist who wasn’t identified. The misplacement of objects and artworks within government facilities in France isn’t all that uncommon. According to figures cited by The Guardian, there are roughly 430,000 works of art spread out across all public buildings in France, and a 2016 report suggested that 22,800 objects had gone missing.