Talk:Lost artworks

This is not a catch-all article for lost valuable things ...
It is specifically about artworks, and the scope stops at the point where something is not notable for being artwork or the event is not notable because of its effect on artwork (i.e. the loss of a notable work or the loss of a notable number of less notable works). Libraries have their own article listing page as do treasures.
 * eta a new article on Lost relics is probably needed JBVaughan (talk) 03:30, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

The Library of Congress 1851 fire was listed as a notable loss event because it destroyed so many significant presidential portraits by Gilbert Stuart, but I have taken it off so nobody gets confused about what should be on the list.

Items needing links to wiki content or moving to other articles
File:MUSEO NACIONAL DE RIO DE JANEIRO FRESCO.jpg|Fresco of Jupiter on Mount Olympus by Mario Bragaldi in the National Museum of Brazil. Picture taken a few months before the fire

Accuracy, Checking, and Editing
I've spent about two days breaking the long extended blocks of points out into individual tabled artwork items (and created a section for notable loss events), originally just to enable sorting. However, the more I try to normalize usage and tighten the text as well as complete the table, include images and links, the more I am finding pieces that are not, in fact, missing (someone seems to have thought, at some point, that the article was about works of art with "Lost" in the title). This article desperately needs a ton of checking and editing and referencing. I'll do what I can but getting tired. Hope the articke structure provided and the table structure helps to further clean it up and ensure accuracy JBVaughan (talk) 05:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

List of Notable Lost Works: Style/Editing Logic
Proposed Convention: There are hundreds of thousands of documented lost works but, as the threshold for content in wikipedia is notability, it seems clear that the basic logic of the current list (of a few hundred) is that the work is notable at the international level and/or has it's own article or content/section in an artist's article (or content in the loss institution's article) reflecting notability. The table could be reasonably expected to contain links to notable lost works documented elsewhere on wikipedia to the tune of a thousand items. That is a big table, but not unheard of. However, it should be as concise and efficient as possible at that size, conveying to the reader identification of "notable lost-ness" (in art) and links to further content, but not much more than that (which specificity would fall beyond the scope of the article as a high-level entry-point for learning about lost artworks and into specificity about an artist, a work, or a location). In the cases where the work title does not yet link out to another, more detailed, narrative description, this seems to be a matter of finding the existing content (there is tons of content already on wikipedia not yet linked to, working on it) or setting up new content which should be created as it meets the wikipedia guidelines. Therefore, because detailed narrative for each piece exists, or should be made to exist, the table does not need to contain extensive description, particularly statements of notability (i.e. "Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" or extensive provenance notes) because linked inclusion in the table establishes notability. This can reduce the display length of each item from 3 or 4 to 1 or 2 lines, effectively halving the visual size and tightening up spatial parameters that may enable better display of images and rapid information access and readability.JBVaughan (talk) 19:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I am working on cleaning data (adding dates and links) and will reduce where possible (i.e. shorten descriptive content that repeats on the linked out page).JBVaughan (talk) 19:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Some new item pages or sections in existing artist pages will likely need to be created and content moved from this page to those.JBVaughan (talk) 19:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Lacking specificity (further research needed)

 * Destroyed || || Decorations for the Castel Sant'Angelo of the life and court of Pope Alexander VI and his children || || || || || Cited by Vasari
 * Destroyed || || Decorations for the Castel Sant'Angelo of the life and court of Pope Alexander VI and his children || || || || || Cited by Vasari

Moving Content to Other Pages
Right now there is specific content for the Oklahoma City Bombing (Murrah Building) and Sept 11 Attacks, but there are almost a hundred other notable loss events that are not covered on this page but on the home pages of the event or the structure destroyed at the time the art was lost. I am moving the following content over to Alfred_P._Murrah_Federal_Building, Collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center, and Museum_of_Modern_Art,_Rio_de_Janeiro and then linking to those pages from the Notable Loss Events list. Notable works contained in the sept 11 text will be added to the notable artowlrs list and the Loss event will also link to the main pages.JBVaughan (talk) 02:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

"Many works of art were in the Murrah Building Bombing when it was destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing . The Oklahoma City National Memorial displays art that survived the bombing. Sky Ribbons: An Oklahoma Tribute, (1978) Fiber sculpture by Gerhardt Knodel, Columbines at Cascade Canyon, Photograph by Albert D. Edgar, Winter Scene, Photography by Curt Clyne, Morning Mist, Photograph by David Halpern, Charon's Sentinels, Photograph by David Halpern, Soaring Currents, Sisal and rayon textile by Karen Chapnick, Monolith, Porcelain sculpture by Frank Simons, Through the Looking Glass, Wool Textile by Anna Burgress, Palm Tree Coil, Bronze sculpture by Jerry McMillan. An untitled acrylic sculpture by Fred Eversley was severely damaged, but survived the blast."

Many works of art were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks when the World Trade Center buildings collapsed.
 * Ideogram (1967) stainless steel sculpture by James Rosati
 * Cloud Fortress (1975) a large, black granite piece by Japanese artist Masayuki Nagare, destroyed in the 9/11 rescue and recovery efforts.
 * The World Trade Center Tapestry a 20' x 35' tapestry by Joan Miró that hung in the South Tower Lobby.
 * Sky Gate, New York (1977–78) large wooden sculpture by Louise Nevelson
 * A memorial fountain for the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by Elyn Zimmerman
 * World Trade Center Stabile (1971) a 25' red steel sculpture by Alexander Calder. Approximately 30% of the sculpture was recovered.
 * Some 300 sculptures and drawings by Auguste Rodin, part of the Cantor Fitzgerald collection.
 * Needle Tower (1968) by Kenneth Snelson.
 * Recollection Pond, a tapestry by Romare Bearden.
 * Path Mural, by Germaine Keller.
 * Commuter Landscape, a large mural by Cynthia Mailman.
 * Fan Dancing with the Birds, a mural by Hunt Slonem.
 * The Entablature Series by Roy Lichtenstein
 * Approximately 40,000 negatives of photographs by Jacques Lowe documenting the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
 * The Sphere, an abstract sculpture by Fritz Koenig, survived the collapse but was seriously damaged, and now serves as a memorial.
 * Countless other works of art and valuable artifacts, found in safe deposit boxes located throughout the towers, were also destroyed. Two other sculptures were damaged, but not destroyed by the attacks. These are Red Cube by Isamu Noguchi and Joie de Vivre by Mark di Suvero, located down the street from the World Trade Center. They were repaired and still stand today.

"On July 8, 1978, a rough fire caused by a cigarette or due an electrical failure, destroyed 90% of the artworks of the Museu de Arte Moderna, in Rio de Janeiro - including artworks from Pablo Picasso ('Cubist Head' and 'Portrait of Dora Maar'), Miró, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Ivan Serpa, Manabu Mabe and others - and all artworks showed in a big retrospective of artist Joaquin Torres García."

Momart fire
This article needs some coverage of the Momart fire (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/britartfire/0,,1226860,00.html) that destroyed works by Tracy Emin and other British artists. --Dominic Sayers 11:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, will add. MakeRocketGoNow 13:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Greek sculpture
With a few possible (and highly disputed) exceptions, such as "Hermes with the Infant Dionysus" we have no classical or pre-classical (that is, predating 300 B.C.) Greek statues that can be attributed with reasonable certainty to a named master. There are many references to classical master sculptors in ancient literature (e.g. Phidias, Lysimachos) but no certain original works. Any attribution of specific Parthenon sculptures to Phidias is just legendary. There are also sculptures we know existed because later copies/paraphrases have survived, but very rarely do we have original and copy of the same motive. 83.254.146.108 (talk) 19:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Is this really lost?
This page says that the painting, "Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus and Mercury Stealing Them" is lost, whereas on the page for the artist Claude Lorrain we see an image of this same picture. The source file for that image says that the original is currently in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, in Rome. Do you have a source that says it is lost?  Cottonshirt  τ   10:44, 4 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It has been three months. Since neither this article nor the one on Holker Hall have a source for the claim that this painting was ever even there, much less destroyed by fire in 1871, I am deleting it from this article.  Cottonshirt  τ   13:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Paintings on "pagan" subjects by Sandro Botticelli, who burned them
The article on Bonfire of the Vanities says that "the historical record on this is not clear". Paul Magnussen (talk) 20:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

The Martyrdom of Erasmus
Enemy action? Whose enemy? POV, surely?

Same for Saint Gregory Praying for Souls in Purgatory and The Destruction of Niobe's Children. Paul Magnussen (talk) 20:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Laura Knight
I don't know if this counts; Laura Knight's "No 1 Dressing Room" was damaged beyond repair in a fire and repainted, with some small variations, by the artist: http://worldsfamouspictures.tumblr.com/post/71891547242/dressing-for-the-ballet-by-laura-knight-we-have so the original is gone, but not completely lost! Notjim (talk) 17:21, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
 * What an absolutely fascinating read. I'd love to include it, but fear a citation to tumblr might be beyond the pale for Wikipedians, though I think its quite acceptable in this case. I created the first article on a Laura Knight painting, Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring, earlier this week. Knight deserves more attention. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 17:29, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Tabling the List
Will start tabling the list in sortable format.JBVaughan (talk) 22:47, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Section on Notable Loss Events needed
Might end up linking to or becoming separate articles.JBVaughan (talk) 22:47, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Set this up as a section with subsections, which could then be linked to from the items table, but it is going to make the article too long and the stylist and editing consideration overly complex... so changing strategy to turn it into a timeline that links to other articles and article sections. JBVaughan (talk) 23:01, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Section needed on who maintains Lists of lost artworks
I don't have enough direct professional contact to know which agencies are doing this (know there is one big one for holocaust reparations but can't even remember the name). Can anybody help?JBVaughan (talk) 22:47, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Notability Issues
Following text removed from the main list of notable artworks as it is not at the same level of notability as the rest, could be included in the article once a means of handling less notable items is developed (is this here because it represents a notable and currently active search?) JBVaughan (talk) 22:13, 21 March 2014 (UTC) Various pieces designed by William Burges for his house, The Tower House, have been lost. These include a white jade tazza and a salt cellar, both made in 1875, a sideboard and a display cabinet (1875–76), a mounted orange and a pair of buffets (1877), a pair of mirrors (c.1878), a mounted shell and a dressing table (1879), bronze frogs (1880), and a bronze; "Fame" (1880–81).

Orphaned references in Lost artworks
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Lost artworks's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "images": From Bridgewater House, Westminster:  From Walters Art Museum:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 08:07, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Byzantine art
..is of course nearly all "missing", but major icons that should be mentioned are those of Camuliana, the Image of Edessa and the Hodegetria. Also the mosaics lost in 1922 or thereabouts in the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 at Hagios Demetrios. Johnbod (talk) 04:09, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Camuliana, Image of Edessa, and Hodegetria are in but loss event unknown for the later. JBVaughan (talk) 17:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Listing order (obsolete discussion)
I think it would make more sense to order these by the date of the loss, not the date of the artwork's creation as they currently are, because in many instances you have multiple losses in one tragic event and of course they often were created during different years. I think it makes sense to keep these together to show them as one loss, but that really isn't possible unless the order format is changed. Some people have already figured this out, and that is why you have all the losses from Sept 11th and the London fire grouped together. Otherwise, you end up with what you have now, which is a mixture of both order methods. Also, I think it is more important to highlight when they were lost rather than when they were made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.0.190 (talk) 21:21, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

It seems worthwhile to put this in a sortable table so that the date created can be the initial sort order but a separate sortable loss date column can be used to access them in order that way. I can work on this. Additionally you note that people are creating groupings and it seem the article would benefit from an entire section on Notable Loss Events as well as a section on who creates and maintains lists of lost works. I can work on this as well although I am not currently in the art world and do not know standard sources (if there a journal for this?). JBVaughan (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Hiroshima?
Is it seriously true that no notable artworks were lost in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The article has no mention of either. Or don't Japanese artworks count? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 01:08, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Removing the list to table request tag for following reasons
A bot or a person has added a tag requesting the list 'Chronology of Loss Events' be "improved" to a sortable table format but this should not be done for the following reasons:
 * 1) The dates of the loss events extend well before the common era and often represent a range without date specificity, therefore they cannot be sorted automatically by a table. It is clear the list is a chronology arranged in date order from the list title.
 * 2) The Loss Event name is effectively an assigned title for the event enabling a link to content about the event in other articles and providing a standardized name for the event to be referred to in the sortable table(s) in the next section(s) and sorting them alphabetically is useless.JBVaughan (talk) 17:02, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Just a minor change.
Hello there. Just a minor change in the title itself. Instead of the name "Lost artworks" rename it into "List of lost artworks" please. So that it can be "collected" with other articles of the same nature, such as the "List of lost films" and "List of lost or unfinished animated films". Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unknown contributor123 (talk • contribs) 17:22, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Maldives
In 2012 Islamists attacked the National Museum of the Maldives and destroyed virtually all of the remaining Buddhist heritage of the Maldives. I should think that this event ought to be included, but perhaps these objects were not sufficiently notable as art?Bill (talk) 02:21, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

How are we defining a "notable find?"
Does any notable artwork that was lost and later rediscovered qualify, or does the rediscovery itself need to have been a notable event? For example, Venus Callipyge is certainly notable, and it was lost and then found, but it seems no one took much notice of the loss or the rediscovery because it wasn't a famous work yet. Should examples like this be added to the list or not? -Elmer Clark (talk) 23:47, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think antiquities "lost" and much later excavated should be included - otherwise all classical sculptures could go in. Johnbod (talk) 02:01, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Splitter up
I propose that we break this up into articles which focus on the cause of disappearance per the WP:RS provided. Separate lists would be easier to maintain than a timeline covering every subject. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:26, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Five main categories:


 * - Fire... I'm thinking primarily arson for this article.
 * - Natural disasters... earthquakes, floods, tornado, lighting strike, ect...
 * - Wars... This article would link to Art theft and looting during World War II, and the articles associated with it.
 * - Theft... remember we have List of stolen paintings for that category, is there a way to expand that?
 * - Accidental... we have an article called Accidental damage of art for these. Artwork that belongs here should be confined to Transportation accidents, Human error, Negligence and diligence, and Failed restoration.

- Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:45, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Have to disagree as articles are not bounded by consideration of ease of maintenance, but on usefulness as encyclopedia articles and the proposed splits are neither mutually exclusive categories or useful to any user seeking information on lost artworks. A user who doesn't know how an artwork was destroyed will not be able to find the right article without checking them all and a user seeking artworks from specific times or places will not able to find them all without first figuring out the range of separate articles that need to be accessed. There is also a notability issue as the proposed type of art loss event categorization is not itself a notable component (possibly excluding terrorism) but becomes a title element, despite the relative insignificance to the intended subject. JBVaughan (talk) 20:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I wanted to at least start with fire related events to see how things would look. Already, I am finding lost works put into the wrong time period so it would be an improvement if the things were re-added. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:28, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay I have digested a bit about what you said and disagree about a user not knowing how x artwork was destroyed. Artwork is a broad topic which covers many centuries of history from cave paintings to modern art. That being said, the average reader would need to have some kind of knowledge about what they are looking for in particular. As for notability, it's famous artwork being destroyed (how much more notability do you need other than that?). Another possible option would be to split up the paintings into articles by time period. This proposal in the end is about WP:SIZE...


 * "The article size impacts usability in multiple ways:
 * Reader issues, such as attention span, readability, organization, information saturation, etc.
 * Maintenance, such as articles becoming time-consuming to maintain when they are very long.
 * Technical issues, such as the maximum limit of the MediaWiki software."


 * We need articles that are manageable for good reasons. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:49, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:SIZE specifically excludes tables from consideration in the first condition "Readable prose size: the amount of viewable text in the main sections of the article, not including tables, lists, or footer sections" and the actual amount of readable prose is not that great. It is not actually an unusually long article for one that is predominantly list. The lists are already broken into editable sub-lists. It is already broken into workable subsections. It is not really an unusually long article. JBVaughan (talk) 03:18, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Hey, I understand the hard work you put into this article which is why I care about your input. I actually came from Accidental damage of art which I noticed has entries that duplicate things here. I just can't shake this feeling that the scope of lost art is huge... it isn't good to have such a broad topic. At least by putting them in timeline lists we can better link to the other art lists such as works of art destroyed during WWII. At the very least for what we have now... I think something like this User:Knowledgekid87/sandbox would look better. It would get rid of the "missing" vs "destroyed column in favor of how the artwork was lost. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 06:56, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Your suggestion just seems to reflect an individual user who is - perhaps temporarily - overwhelmed and has developed a personal preference to accommodate their own needs, rather than broader consensus. You haven't posted any examples of other predominantly list article practices that would back up your assertion that your suggestions reflect previously established good practice. And, again, your categories are not mutually exclusive, which will create tremendous redundancy and confusion; finally, your proposal would rely on including article TITLE elements that are not the focus (the type of loss event) to most users seeking information on Lost Art. JBVaughan (talk) 20:41, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * And remember that this list is only for lost NOTABLE artworks, so it is destined to be long but it won't run into the millions, or even the hundred thousands. Ultimately, every listed artwork should link to their own article or at least a subsection in the artist's article. And, there should be news coverage of the lost piece. This article is not recreating the art loss register. JBVaughan (talk) 20:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)