Prosecutor’s office closes case on disappearance of public works of art

Prosecutors have closed an investigation into the disappearance of 94 works from the state collection of contemporary art, the Attorney General’s Office (GP) told Lusa on Tuesday.

The investigation was launched in July 2020 by the Department of Investigations and Criminal Affairs (DIAP) of Lisbon after the Ministry of Culture sent a report from the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage (DGPC) to the Ministry of Public Administration to locate the missing works.

A PGR press source contacted by Lusa said the investigation in question “was in line with the filing order.”

The DGPC report lists 94 works of art from the former collection of the SEC (Secretary of State for Culture) whose whereabouts are unknown and another 18 works of art “whose whereabouts are unknown or need to be checked with the Portuguese Center for Photography.” , in the port.

At the time, Minister of Culture Graça Fonseca announced that the report would be sent to the prosecutor’s office, reasoning that the guardianship had no investigative powers and therefore the document would be “sent to the relevant authorities”. .

For its part, PGR forwarded the document to DIAP in Lisbon, where it prompted an inquiry, an official source contacted by Lusa said in July: “This process is under investigation and is subject to external secrecy,” the source said. .

The DGPC report warned that “the presence of discoverable works represents a weakness in the collection” of contemporary art.

Among the works of art whose whereabouts are unknown are prints, drawings, paintings, sculptures, in particular, by José de Guimarães, Malangatan, Xana, Helena Almeida, Jorge Pinheiro, Abel Manta, Julio Pomar and Graça Morais.

Lusa contacted the Ministry of Culture for a response, and the press office indicated that Culture Minister Pedro Adao e Silva “does not comment” on archiving the request.

Created in 1976, the so-called SEC collection, now the State Collection of Contemporary Art, brings together about a thousand works, mainly by Portuguese artists such as Helena Almeida, Julián Sarmento, José de Guimarães, Abel Manta, Julio Pomar, Ilda David. , Noronha da Costa.

It also includes foreign artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe and Sebastian Salgado and can be found in various social, cultural and non-cultural organizations in Portugal and abroad.

“The constant turnover of works over more than four decades of the existence of the collection, not always [foi] accompanied by the necessary documentary report and inventory,” says the report, approved by the then director general of the cultural heritage department, Paula Silva.

In the collection’s previous official inventory document, dated 2011, 170 works were registered, the whereabouts of which are unknown.

In this new registry, entries have been updated and cleared, art location information has been clarified, with the DGPC reaching a total of 94 works in an undetermined portion.

Another 18 photographic works are also in an unknown location, but were not included in this inventory, as they are not under the jurisdiction of the DGPC, although they are of a public nature, as they are part of the collection of the Centro Português de Fotografia under the control of the General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries.

The collection of modern art of the Ministry of Culture is distributed among organizations such as embassies, regional directorates of culture, but most of them can be found in the Serralves Foundation (553 works), in Porto, in the city council of Aveiro (159) and in the Belém Museum. Cultural Center (37) in Lisbon.