Czech National Gallery loses dozens of artifacts

Several dozen artifacts are missing from the National Gallery in Prague, the Czech Supreme Audit Office (NKU) announced on Monday.

It said when the stocktaing of the collection ended in 2012, the gallery found 31 drawings were missing, which include works of renowned Czech 20th-century artists, such as Josef Lada, Frantisek Kupka and Jan Zrzavy.

The NKU said that its audit concerned the management of the National Gallery, the National Library and the National Technical Library in Prague between 2012 and 2014. The most serious shortcomings were discovered at the National Gallery.

The NKU said that the National Gallery only filed a legal complaint over the loss of Zrzavy's drawing entitled Zeyer's Garden during its inspection, which is at least 13 years after the artifact got lost.

Current director Jiri Fajt of the Czech National Gallery said that the inspection of NKU is a chance of "cutting off from the past definitively" for the gallery.

He did not rule out the possibility of filing further criminal complaints over the missing artifacts. At the same time, he is preparing a reorganization of the National Gallery that should prevent similar problems.

Jiri Fajt, who took office on July 1, 2014, stated that all NKU's findings referred to the previous management of the National Gallery. The revealed problems are the result of a bad internal control system of the National Gallery.

The NKU also criticised the National Gallery for not having carried out stocktaking of its collection in its depository that damaged by the floods in 2002. Apart from drawings, a painting, a bronze statue and 978 items registered in a graphic art collection are missing from the National Gallery.