Bronze sculptures missing from park

LITTLE ROCK — Little Rock police are searching for about $20,000 in bronze sculptures that were taken from a downtown park.

A Little Rock Parks & Recreation worker did a morning inspection of Riverfront Park late last week when he noticed three sculptures missing from the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden, police said. The bronze pieces may have been taken to a scrapyard, authorities said.

The stolen sculptures include a two-foot section of “long-legged man looking up,” a three-feet tall sculpture of two storks in flight and a one-foot tall female dancer, police said.

Police said the thieves removed the first sculpture by wiggling it back and forth until the man’s ankles broke apart from the rest of the body. The thieves had to grind the base and mountingbolts off the other two sculptures, authorities said.

“(Bronze) is pretty rigid,” said Charles Alman, chairman of Sol Alman Company Scrap Metal Recycling. “I don’t know what the method was...but that would take a lot of force behind that, I would think.”

Authorities believe the thieves had to haul off the sculptures, said Little Rock spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis.

If scrapyard employees don’t know an item is stolen, they will weigh the object and throw it in with the rest of the scrap, “no questions asked,” she said.

The Police Department has had problems with copper thefts, but a new rule to show a driver’s license when trading in the metal may have moved thieves onto a different metal, she said.

Alman’s company hasn’t seen anyone trying to bring in bronze, he said.

“They may try to meltit down,” Alman said. “I’m looking at a melting point of 1,750 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is kind of warm, but I don’t know what they’re able to do.”

While Alman didn’t know the makeup of the sculptures, he said high-grade bronze is composed of about 85 percent copper, 7 percent tin, 6 percent lead and 2 percent zinc. That will run about $2.35 per pound for scrap, he said.

The sculpture garden, just north of the Peabody Little Rock hotel, was created about four years ago to house several works of art, said city parks department Director Truman Tolefree.

A sculpture has never been taken before at the park, and the artists, parks department and city officials are meeting to help prevent further thefts, Tolefree said.

“It’s terrible that it happened, for someone to come in and do that,” he said. “We see this as an isolated incident.” The group is still discussing possible deterrents, he said.