[CPProt.net] A Sculptor's Weighty Work Is Whole Again

[Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton Cremers)]

A Sculptor's Weighty Work Is Whole Again
By BEN SISARIO 

Published: April 1, 2005


he Ides of March" came and went, and came back again.

Three of the four pieces of Philip Pavia's totemic bronze sculpture from
1962, a 3,000-pound set of three diamond shapes and a low-lying arm, which
the artist liked so much he named it for his birthday - March 15, the ides -
disappeared from an office building in Midtown Manhattan last week and were
reported stolen. On Wednesday the three missing pieces were returned, making
the work whole again but leaving many questions unanswered.
 
The sculpture, which had stood at the porte-cochère of the New York Hilton
for 25 years before moving to the Hippodrome at Avenue of the Americas and
43rd Street in 1988, had been in temporary storage at the Hippodrome before
being sent to the museum at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. 

On March 23 a group from Hofstra went to inspect the sculpture but found
only the biggest piece, 10 feet tall and about 1,000 pounds. Representatives
of the university and the building management were stunned and embarrassed,
and the artist, a 94-year-old lion of the midcentury avant-garde who counted
Henry Miller and Willem de Kooning among his closest friends, was
heartbroken.

Late last week a man, whom a police spokesman described as a scrap
collector, went to the Hippodrome and tried to take the last piece. 

But let it not be said there is no honor among scrap men. This week a man
identified by the police as a scrap dealer in the Bronx returned the missing
pieces, and all four pieces of "The Ides of March" are now back at the
Hippodrome.

A police official said the scrap metal dealer, after learning that the hunks
of bronze in his yard had been stolen, called his lawyer, who alerted the
authorities. The dealer told investigators who sold him the pieces, and the
police are now looking for that person, the official said. That person had
been picking up scrap metal from a construction site nearby, the official
said, but he did not have permission to remove the sculpture.

Yesterday the pieces were in the loading dock of the Hippodrome, tucked next
to a line of metal bins and piles of garbage. By midafternoon there appeared
to be a makeshift screen around it, made of plywood and a plastic tarp.

Some in the art world were still puzzled by the sculpture's disappearance.
Only about 7 percent of art thefts happen in public and commercial spaces,
according to the Art Loss Register, a London-based group that tracks stolen
art.

And public artworks the size of "The Ides of March" are rarely stolen, said
Tom Eccles, the director of the Public Art Fund in New York. Small outdoor
and public works are often stolen or destroyed in the attempt, he said,
offering in surprisingly good humor a long list of pieces ripped from
concrete, covered in plaster of Paris, torn apart for ease of flight and
otherwise ruined. 

But when very large and heavy works have been threatened with theft, the
threats were laughed off as hoaxes, Mr. Eccles said. In autumn 1993, when
the Public Art Fund installed 14 gigantic bronzes by the Colombian artist
Fernando Botero, weighing up to 2,900 pounds, along Park Avenue, a threat
was received saying that the pieces would be thrown into the East River on
Halloween.

"We discussed whether to alert the police," Mr. Eccles said, "and then we
looked at them, all 15 tons, and said 'Good luck.' "

The Boteros remained unharmed.

Mr. Pavia could not be reached for comment, but his wife, Natalie Edgar,
said she and her husband were deeply pleased by the return of the work.

"The whole aim was to recover those pieces," she said yesterday, "which he
called a piece of beauty and a piece of New York."


William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/