Thousands of works of art and artefacts have been lost from Scottish museums and galleries

From tens of millions of works of art and objects from collections gallery and Scottish museums, thousands have been lost. The BBC Scotland News asked the most popular cultural institutions for records of objects that have been lost, stolen and disappeared. The responses show that a wide range of exhibits, from ancient relics to expensive works of art, are unaccounted for.

Many of its museum and gallery directors Scotlandcontacted by the BBC, argued that most of the missing items are victims of poor record-keeping rather than criminal endeavours.

Among the exhibits that have disappeared are some quite strange ones. A dolphin skull was stolen from the Hunterian Museum of Zoology in Glasgow sometime between 2010 and 2021. A large bottle labeled “poison” is missing from the Rozelle House gallery in Ayr, APE reports.

The National Museum of Scotland reports that a pilot’s uniform, goggles and flight jacket were stolen in November 1986 – a robbery which may have been influenced by the fact that the first ‘Top Gun’ movie was released a few weeks before. In 2022, officials at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh reported five cases of attempted theft of plants and seeds. The staff managed to prevent the removal of rare items.

Probably the most valuable item currently missing of Scotland’s museums and galleries is one 3 million pound sculpture of the world famous artist Auguste Rodin. However, there have also been cases of stolen exhibits being returned. Glasgow Life Museums has announced that a painting that has been missing for more than 30 years has recently been returned.

Children Wading, painted by Robert Gemmell Hutchison in 1918, was stolen from the Museum of Childhood at Haggs Castle in 1989, but was found after it was put up for sale at auction by an unsuspecting seller.

Many organizations report that the poor record keeping and the project – mammoth digitization of these records show that most of the missing items were not stolen, just not recorded correctly.

Source: News Beast

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