Of tens of millions of works of art and artefacts from the collections of Scottish galleries and museums, thousands have been lost, BBC Scotland News reports.

The British network asked Scotland’s most popular cultural institutions for records of items 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.

Probably the most valuable object currently missing from Scotland’s museums and galleries is a £3 million sculpture by world-renowned artist Auguste Rodin.

Many of Scotland’s museum and gallery directors contacted by the BBC said most of the missing objects were the victims of poor record-keeping rather than criminal endeavours.

Among the exhibits that have disappeared are some quite strange ones.

One was stolen from the Hunterian Museum of Zoology in Glasgow dolphin skull sometime between 2010 and 2021.

A large bottle labeled “poison” missing from the Rozelle House Gallery in Aur.

The National Museum of Scotland reports that pilot uniformgoggles and flight jacket were stolen in November 1986 – a heist perhaps influenced by the fact that the first film “Top Gun» was released a few weeks ago.

In 2022, officials at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh reported five cases attempted theft of plants and seeds. The staff managed to prevent the removal of rare items.

And what was found…

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 poor record keeping and the mammoth task of digitizing these records indicate that most of the missing items were not stolen, they were simply not recorded properly.