The art vanished from some of the most public buildings in the state. From office walls and lobbies. From a hospital, a health clinic and a university campus. From places where people probably saw the art so often, they may have stopped noticing it — until someone asked where the pieces were.

All of it — a collection of 11 sculptures, paintings and a lithograph print — is part of the state's Art in Public Places Program, which manages an inventory of 5,296 pieces of locally produced art.

No one is sure if they were stolen or misplaced, but the Hawai'i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts wants them returned, with no questions asked.

"It could have been damaged and somebody tossed it, but it could have walked away," said Peter Rosegg, chairman of the foundation's APP committee. "It could have fallen and somebody, shame-faced, swept it under the rug. Whatever the story of how it disappeared, we don't care. We just want it back."

The pieces were created by some of Hawai'i's most influential artists: John Wisnosky, Bumpei Akaji, Ka-Ning Fong, Sally Story, Harry Tsuchidana, Ronald Kubo, Tetsuo Ochikubo, Toshiko Takaezu, Kenneth Shutt, Willson Stamper and Murray Turnbull.

"There are a lot of people here who have been, and in many cases still are, highly respected," said Duane Preble, art professor emeritus of the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. "They have been very much a part of the history of the visual arts in Hawai'i."

Stamper taught painting and illustration through the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Preble said. Akaji produced sculptures that are all over the state. And Wisnosky was a prolific painter and former chairman of the UH art department. His art is on display at Honolulu International Airport and the Hawai'i Convention Center, Preble said.

"He is considered one of the major artists in Hawai'i," Preble said. "And because of his teaching, he had a major influence on many upcoming artists."

Preble, who taught art for 30 years before he retired in 1991, isn't surprised that some of the state's public art has disappeared.

"It does seem crazy, but the state foundation has been understaffed," he said. "The leadership has changed many times because people get overworked. They don't have enough staff to keep track of these things."

VALUE IN THOUSANDS

The state has collected art since 1967 when lawmakers mandated that 1 percent of the cost of state buildings would be set aside to acquire and commission art. The idea was to beautify and humanize the manmade environment with art that could be moved around the state. The program also wanted to contribute to the development and recognition of Island artists.

Today, that art is displayed in nearly 500 locations.

"There was this tremendous boom in building government offices and buildings, and while they tried to make them attractive, they couldn't," Rosegg said. "So they tried to include art to beautify things."

The current value of the missing art isn't known, but the total cost of the original purchases comes to $8,079. Much of it was purchased in the early 1970s.

"I think it is safe to say that the art by some of these artists here may have grown in value 10, 20 or 30 times," said Rosegg, who serves on the art committee as a volunteer and is more widely known as a spokesman for Hawaiian Electric Co.

Despite the possibility, state art officials aren't ready to accuse anyone of theft. Someone showing up at the foundation offices with a missing piece of art will prompt a "thank you," not a call to police, Rosegg said.

"Maybe somebody stole it," he said. "Maybe someone took it home to keep it safe when an office was about to be painted. You forget to bring it back. People have library books they didn't intend to steal."

The Foundation on Culture and the Arts has known for years that pieces were missing, including one from its own offices — a 411/2-inch-tall travertine marble and koa wood sculpture by Kubo called "Bound for Tears: Child." It was lost when the foundation moved in 1994, and finding it wasn't made any easier after the office moved again, to its current location in No. 1 Capitol District Building on Hotel Street.

Akaji's "Pao" copper sculpture has been gone the longest — 22 years. It was reported missing from Kinau Hale, home of the state Department of Health.

Gerald Ohta, the health department's affirmative action officer and an employee there for almost 38 years, remembers the sculpture. At first it was in the Kinau Hale lobby, then in the office of director Leslie Matsubara, who left the department in late 1986. Then "Pao" was gone — where or why, Ohta isn't sure.

But state art officials often receive requests from new government department officials to change the art. And December 1986, when "Pao" was last seen, was a transition period for then Gov.-elect John Waihee and his new Cabinet.

"I wouldn't want to speculate," said Ohta on what may have happened. "All I remember was seeing it there. It wasn't something I focused on, but then all of a sudden you notice it was not there."

RECOVERY EFFORTS

Through the years, efforts have been made to locate some of the 11 pieces, as well as others in the state's collection. Letters are sent annually to each location where the art is displayed to verify if the art is still there. Every few years, someone visits each location for a physical inspection.

If possible, damaged art is scheduled for restoration but if that can't be accomplished, it's usually destroyed. The missing art goes on a list. By last November, the list was up to 11.

Roland Licona, the Kaua'i district supervisor for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, said he's been contacted several times since he began working at the office in 1997. His response has always been the same: He has no idea what happened to the watercolor painting "Papaaloa Sugar Mill," which was lost five years before his arrival.

Licona doesn't even know what the painting looks like. When the state first called him, there was a painting on his wall of a woman chanting in a forest. It's been replaced twice.

"I keep filling out reports and reports and telling them I have never seen the sugar mill painting," he said.

The painting by Shutt, a California-born artist who lived in Hawai'i for 32 years, was bought for $275. Licona doesn't think it would have been interesting enough to steal.

"Is it a valuable piece of art?" he said. "Doesn't sound like one to me. I must have spent five times the cost by filing reports on that sugar mill."

Renovation work, much like an office move, can accidentally send art to the limbo of storage closets. That may have been the case in the Maui County prosecutor's office, where two works — which were first installed in 1981 — have been missing since 1993, said John Kim, a deputy prosecuting attorney with Maui County.

"Every once in a while, we would go get Christmas decorations from storage and we go, 'What the heck is this? It's a piece of art,' " Kim said. "But we didn't know who it belonged to, so we would leave it there."

Kim recently checked every storage closet and evidence vault he knew of and found nothing. The artworks have been gone for so long, people have forgotten about them.

"I walked around the whole building upstairs and downstairs and in an evidence cage under lock and key," he said. "Even the secretaries don't recall if they were here."

Artists forget, too. The 89-year-old Turnbull can't remember the 1973 painting lost from the Diamond Head Health Center but said the title -"It Was Not Earth, it was not heaven, it was myself that sang in me (Sara Teasdale)" — sounded familiar.

Turnbull, who estimated he has created about 10,000 pieces of art in his life, has mixed feelings about someone losing his art.

"In a sense, I treasure each thing I do," he said. "But on the other hand, I am not going to get worked up over it. This can happen."

With an inventory like the state's, he's surprised it doesn't happen more often.

"No, I don't like it to happen, but I am not bitter about it," he said. "It is the way the world goes. I can't prevent it."