In recent years, there has been a debate about whether the owners of “heritage assets” should include them on their balance sheets. We present a longitudinal study of the collection of 77 pictures donated by Thomas Holloway to Royal Holloway College between 1881 and 1883. We draw on archival material to analyse accounting practices for Holloway's picture collection, finding that the collection remained effectively invisible as an accounting object until 1999, when accounting requirements for heritage assets were first applied. We use Jean Baudrillard's “orders of simulacra” to study the relationship between accounting signs and their referents, and we draw on Bruno Latour's notion of “matters of concern” to investigate how changes in the accounting sign render the referent a complicating, agitating and provoking “matter” in different ways. The Royal Holloway financial statements currently present the picture collection by an accounting sign that we suggest is a “counterfeit” (signifying the money that could, counterfactually, be made from selling the paintings) but not a “simulation” (creating a hyperreality detached from the referent). This relationship between the sign and the referent makes up the ontological status of “assets” in accounting reports, rendering assets capable of triggering actual (rather than hyperreal) material effects.

近年来，关于“遗产资产”的所有者是否应将其纳入资产负债表的争论一直存在。我们对托马斯·霍洛威（Thomas Holloway）在1881年至1883年之间捐赠给皇家霍洛威学院的77张图片进行了纵向研究。我们利用档案资料分析了霍洛威图片收藏的会计惯例，发现该收藏一直有效地作为会计对象不可见1999年，当遗产资产的会计要求首次适用时。我们使用让·鲍德里亚（Jean Baudrillard）的“模拟法令”研究会计符号与其参考对象之间的关系，并借鉴布鲁诺·拉图尔（Bruno Latour）的“关注事项”的概念来研究会计符号的变化如何使参考对象变得复杂，以不同的方式煽动和挑衅“问题”。皇家霍洛威（Royal Holloway）财务报表目前以会计符号显示图片集，我们建议该会计符号是“伪造品”（实际上是可以通过出售画作赚钱的），而不是“模拟”（创建与现实无关的超现实主义）指称对象）。符号与对象之间的这种关系构成了会计报告中“资产”的本体状态，从而使资产能够触发实际（而非超现实）物质影响。