Photo: Oli Scarff / Getty Images News / Getty Images
COSTA MESA (CNS) - An Orange Coast College official Tuesday appealed to the person or people who walked off with the college's Andy Warhol print of Mao Zedong to drop it off at a police station, saying no questions will be asked.
"If someone has it and returns it we won't ask a whole lot of questions," Doug Bennett, executive director of the college's foundation, said. "If it shows up on the doorstep of the police station, that's fine."
The print, which was 187 out of 215, was noticed missing on March 13, when the acting director of the college's art gallery was doing a routine inventory, Bennett said. The influential 20th Century artist signed the print in ballpoint pen, Bennett added.
The disappearance prompted a round of "internal inquiries" to see if someone had moved it or something else happened with it, Bennett said.
The foundation reported the print missing to police on March 20, he said.
The print was locked up in a vault that only a handful of people had a key card for, Bennett said.
"I'm the executive director of the foundation and I don't have a key card to the vault, or saw a reason to have one," Bennett said.
The print was donated to the college in September of 2020, Bennett said. At that time it was appraised at $50,000, he said.
The donor who gave it to the foundation acquired it in 1974, Bennett said.
"It wasn't widely known that we had it," Bennett said. "But people did talk about it."
Foundation officials wanted to alert the public about the missing print in the hopes that whoever has it might just bring it back to the college or drop it off at the police station, Bennett said