It’s good news that Kansas City police have arrested one person in connection with the theft of Chinese artist Kwan Wu’s sculpture of an Osage woman from the Francois Chouteau Monument in Kansas City North, near Chouteau Trafficway and Parvin Road.
The arrest, probably the result of someone bragging about the theft, will discourage copycats.
The bad news is the 7-foot-tall, 400-pound sculpture was, predictably, found in pieces, having been sawed up with the intention of selling it for scrap.
The $80,000 sculpture might have brought $1,000 or so on the scrap market, assuming a dealer would have agreed to take the material. Bronze is 90 percent copper and 10 percent tin, thus its appeal to thieves.
Mark McHenry, a member of the organization that has been raising money for the not-completed monument, said most of the parts have been found and that if all are found, the local fabricator who constructed the sculpture originally might be able to reconstruct it.
But if pieces are missing, it would be considerably more difficult.
The theft has been the subject of much gnashing of teeth among us members of the City of Fountains Foundation, whose mission is to promote and advocate for fountains, sculptures and monuments primarily in Kansas City.
Our organization maintains endowments for about 40 fountains, sculptures and monuments, and the Chouteau endowment currently has about $100,000. It is possible some of that money could be used to reconstruct the Osage woman or, if that can’t be done, to replace it.
Although this is the most brazen case I’ve ever heard of relating to a sculpture or bronze theft, it’s hardly the first.
Fairly recently, I believe, a bronze plaque at the Children’s Fountain, also in the Northland, was wrenched from its base, and one of our board members, Jocelyn Ball-Edson, a former Parks Department manager, suggested it might have been “nicked as practice” by the same group that made off with the Osage woman.
Jocelyn recalled another incident years ago when four 7-foot-long plaques disappeared from the base of a tall flagpole in Swope Park. Jacob Loose, businessman and philanthropist, had donated the plaques in 1912. One of the plaques bore the text of the Declaration of Independence, another the words of The Star Spangled Banner and a third the text of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The fourth was the dedication plaque.
Perhaps the most outrageous incident of outdoor art theft took place in 2005, when thieves used a crane to steal a 12-foot-bronze statue created by Henry Moore from the grounds of the sculptor’s former home near London.
The sculpture, called “Reclining Figure,” was worth an estimated $4.5 million. After an international hunt, police determined in 2009 that the piece was likely melted down, shipped abroad — first possibly to Rotterdam and then further east — and eventually sold for as little as $2,300.
It’s too bad that we have to worry about our public art being stolen instead of enjoyed. Jocelyn, of our board, said that back in the 1980s, a Parks Department supervisor once wrote a memo about the bronze plaques that were being stolen and suggested that the department should “just take everything down and put it all in storage until society improves.”
As Jocelyn then said in an email to me…we’re going to be waiting a long time for that.
Note: This post originally said police had arrested three people. As of Friday night, it is apparently just one person.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
From a news article in the Mexican press yesterday.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/manhole-covers-focus-of-thieves-in-pueblas-historic-center/?utm_source=The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_campaign=a885711914-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN+The+Whole+Enchilada&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f17425060f-a885711914-349953849
I wonder how much manhole covers bring in the scrap market.
One of the great stories Alvin Brooks tells from his days with the Police Department (not in his memoir) is about two white guys from Peculiar trying to make off with the cannon at 12th and the Paseo. They had a team of horses and planks, two trucks (one for the cannon, the other for the platform) and were ready to go. Actually, when officer Brooks arrived, the men produced a receipt and said they bought it for $50. Of course those who “sold” it were playing these men for fools. It’s a pretty funny story. Ask Al the next time you have a chance.
The title of Al’s memoir is “Binding Us Together,” published by Andrews McMeel in 2021.
Art & catalytic converters too!! This is easily stopped by requiring MO scrap metal businesses to take a copy of the seller’s photo ID when they come to sell these things. I spoke to a KC Council person about this, and he said that the “scrap metal lobby” (who knew this existed?) has seen to it that this won’t ever happen. He said his office had looked into it previously, and that the MO law overrides the local law about requesting ID. These types of laws promote thievery and are not in the best interests of our citizens. Shame on the scrap metal lobbyists!