Staff are scouring corridors to try to locate valuable art works that have gone missing as the United Nations prepares to vacate its New York headquarters for a four-year, $2bn renovation.

The lost items include a sculpture by José de Rivera, the 20th century American abstract expressionist, and an oil painting entitled “Evening”, a gift from Belarus. An internal audit said the absence of these art works, listed as gifts in the UN’s files, was of “extreme concern”.

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Other missing works, including gifts from member states, do not even figure in the UN’s official art register. Investigators relied on published art books to identify items that had gone astray.

Since the UN moved into the Manhattan complex in 1952, governments have donated hundreds of art works to be exhibited alongside items on loan from museums and private collections.

They range from ancient Roman mosaics to a tapestry of Picasso’s “Guernica” that hangs outside the Security Council.

The case of the missing art came to light in an investigation by the UN’s independent internal auditors who discovered no single individual or department was responsible for ensuring artefacts were catalogued and conserved.

“The overall system of internal control over gifts management is weak, which had resulted in the loss of works of art,” according to the audit report sent to management last autumn by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services.

“Several gifts were not registered and their location is currently unknown.”

The criticisms provide further ammunition to states that charge the UN bureaucracy is bloated and inefficient.

It is evident from the audit that senior officials have had works of art moved to their offices without informing the UN’s architectural and engineering unit who “in the past year spent valuable time tracing missing gifts throughout the United Nations compound”.

As the October deadline nears for a move into temporary accommodation, the management and security departments have been trying to put things right, with some modest successes.

The architectural and engineering unit said in written responses to the Financial Times last week the UN had completed one-third of a new gifts database. One missing picture, a battleship scene, had been tracked down to a wall on the 22nd floor of the 38-floor secretariat building, while 48 items stored in the basement had been identified and labelled.