Lost Pollock Painting Actually Painter's Tarp

A painting believed to be an unknown masterpiece by famed abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock has turned out to be a protective paint tarp, the Associated News Press has learned.

The tarp, otherwise known as a drip sheet, belongs to Ernesto Valentin, a maintenance worker repainting the walls of the new Pollock exhibit inside the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

"I came in one morning to finish the wall behind the vending area, and my sheet was gone," said the 38-year-old father of two. "And I was like, 'damn, I am gonna drip paint all over the Coke machine.'"

The case of mistaken attribution began on Wednesday, December 17. Diane Feingold, Head Curator of the Museum of Modern Art, saw the tarp as she was walking through the unfinished exhibit.

"I saw this masterpiece lying on the floor, and I panicked," she said. "I instructed security to surround the piece with safety cones and caution tape. Then, I called our chief restorationist, screaming that one of the Pollocks had fallen off of the wall."

The tarp hung in the Jackson Pollock exhibit for three weeks before its genesis was discovered. Feingold never believed Valentin's claim to the tarp until he was able to accurately describe the mass of movement and naked emotion on the bottom-left corner.

"He correctly identified the mass as cigarette burns and chewing gum," Feingold said. After the drip sheet was sent to a lab for carbon dating, it was returned to Valentin.

Although the matter has been resolved, Feingold still cannot believe she made such an error.

"It's so peculiar," she said. "I don't understand how I could have mistaken a bunch of random drips of paint for a Pollock."