Thief pedals off with sculpture from Whangārei art center

A thief unbolted a wooden sculpture from its stone base at Whangārei’s Hundertwasser Art Centre, tucked it under one arm and rode off on a bicycle. Police in New Zealand’s Northland region are asking the public to help find it.

The work, Tiori Toru, was taken from the centre’s outdoor sculpture exhibition at around 3:15 a.m. on August 24, Northland Police said in an August 31 statement. It has not been recovered.

Hundertwasser Art Centre director Joost de Bruin said the piece had been bolted to a rock and that whoever took it had come prepared.

“It does look to us like this was not a spur of the moment thing, but it was a bit more carefully prepared than that,” de Bruin told 1News. “This was somebody who was able to do that remarkably skilfully in a short amount of time.”

Senior Sergeant Charmaine Smith, the Whangārei area response manager, said the offender left the scene on a bike and the sculpture had not yet been located.

“While enquiries are ongoing, we are asking for the public’s help in identifying the person responsible for the theft,” Smith said. “Police want to ensure the sculpture is safely returned to its rightful spot.”

The work was installed in early August and measured about 1.4 meters by 600 millimeters, or about 4 feet 7 inches by 2 feet for Americans. Made from pōhutukawa wood with glass inlays, the piece by local artist Karin de Beer represented three bird species — kererū, tūī and pīwakawaka.

The center said the work was named and blessed by Te Parawhau, the local hapū.

De Bruin said the piece had drawn strong support before it disappeared.

“It was a beautiful sculpture,” he said. “If you would go past it, the lights would shine through the glass, which would give you all these different colours of the glass, and we had really positive feedback from the community on the artwork.”

De Beer was sad, disappointed and frustrated by the theft, de Bruin said. He said she told him it was “kind of like a backhanded compliment when your work is stolen,” and that she felt most keenly the loss of the chance to share it with locals, other New Zealanders and overseas visitors.

The center has asked for the sculpture back with no questions asked. In a Facebook post, it said the work could be returned directly to the center or information passed to police or anonymously to Crime Stoppers.

“There’ll be no questions asked and we’ll be very happy to receive it back,” de Bruin said.

The news comes after a distinctive artwork titled Infinite Sea was stolen during a burglary in west Auckland in December.

And in February, Urgent Matter reported on a dispute within a New Zealand family over 19th-century Māori paintings that led to allegations that a regional museum altered catalog records prior to a repatriation decision a family member disputed, a claim later tied to an ongoing police investigation.

Follow this and other cases at Urgent Matter’s art crime tracker.