Famed sculptor falls prey to thieves
Works dismantled, carted out of studio
By Doug MacCash, NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
The thieves may not have known what exactly they stumbled onto when they climbed through a broken window of a nondescript warehouse in eastern New Orleans.
Using a bolt cutter, hack saw and hammer, they dismantled dozens of heavy bronze sculptures by the world-renown New Orleans artist John T. Scott. They’re likely to be sold for scrap, bringing hundreds of dollars.
The artworks normally would command thousands of dollars each.
An artist who shares the studio with Scott said it didn’t appear that the thieves had targeted the storm-damaged studio. There have been a rash of copper thefts, not only in New Orleans but nationally, as the price for the scrap metal has soared.
In fact, in the upstairs hall, rubber insulation was stripped from water pipes in the ceiling and the cover was pried open from the central air-conditioning unit.
Artist Ron Bechet, who shared the studio with Scott, arrived Tuesday at 9 a.m. “just to check in, do a little cleaning.” He first noticed his paintings had been scattered, then the stripped insulation, then the missing sculptures.
“All I could do was scream,” he said. “I was so angry I could feel the blood in my head. I had to sit down for a while.”
Bechet, chairman of the Xavier University art department, called the police and fellow artists to help board up after the break-in. Gallery owner Arthur Roger arrived with a truck to move the remaining sculpture, mostly aluminum and lighter weight bronzes, to a safer location. It was impossible to tell how many sculptures were missing, but Bechet felt the job “looked pretty thorough.”
He said evidence left behind indicated that the thieves systematically dismantled the sculptures, stacking the pieces in boxes to carry them out of the building.
Inexplicably, they broke the statue of a nude woman, Scott’s earliest bronze, from its base at the ankles but left it behind.
“I don’t think Scott needs to have this on his table,” Bechet said.
Scott, a professor of art at Xavier University since 1965, is one of the most successful and influential artists in New Orleans history. His colorful works have filled gallery exhibitions for decades, and his public sculptures such as “Ocean Song” in Woldenberg Park, “Spirit House” at De Saix Circle and “Spirit Gates” at the New Orleans Museum of Art are an important part of the New Orleans landscape. He has received countless commissions and awards, including a 1992 MacArthur fellowship of $315,000.
“Circle Dance,” a major retrospective of Scott’s art, filled the ground floor of the New Orleans Museum of Art in May. It was a career high for the then 64-year-old artist.
But things have taken a downturn since. The studio that Bechet and Scott shared for 12 years was blasted by Katrina’s winds. Plywood still covers an enormous second-story hole where the brick wall collapsed. Then 5 feet of water flooded the ground floor studio, damaging innumerable works of art and ruining much of the heavy machinery used to make it. Scott evacuated to Houston.
Bechet and volunteers have worked to restore the studio for more than a year, but it remains in dismal condition.
Worse yet, Scott, suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, underwent lung transplant surgery in April in Houston. The first transplant failed, but a second was successful. Scott continues to receive rehabilitation in Houston. Thursday was the first time Bechet had heard him speak since the surgery.
“John’s in the hospital, this place is a wreck and now people are trying to take stuff,” Bechet said. “I’m not sure how good this will be for his morale.”