Wichita ? More than 270 works of art and artifacts that have vanished from the Mid-America All-Indian Center might never be recovered because of shoddy record keeping at the museum, city officials said.

Wichita’s art director, John D’Angelo, said most of the items that turned up missing earlier this week were identified only by vague descriptions in acquisition records. He said those descriptions might not hold up if ownership is disputed.

The center has been run by the city since December, when it was revealed that the museum was $135,000 in debt. The city-supported center had been run by a private board.

City officials found out about the missing items when they conducted an inventory of the museum’s collection.

D’Angelo said the most serious problem with tracking down the missing art was a lack of documented photographs of the items. He said museums run by the city routinely take pictures of their exhibits so they can be identified if they are lost or stolen.

“It’s going to be extremely hard to try to recover much of this without the visual images,” he said. “We’ll do our best, but there are a lot of obstacles.”

Lynne Richardson, chief of the FBI’s art theft unit in Washington, said under a 1994 law, any theft from a museum is considered a federal crime, regardless of whether the goods ever cross state lines.

While the FBI hasn’t been asked to join the investigation, Richardson said the agency could become involved whenever a case involves artwork 100 years or older that exceeds $5,000 in value, or when contemporary items add up to $100,000.

Criminals who steal from a museum can face up to 10 years in prison and can be prosecuted as much as 20 years after the crime.