There's Gold in Copper

By Leah Arroyo

This article was published in Museum, March/April issue of 2008.

Imagine stealing a Rolls Royce to sell to a chop shop for parts. The equivalent is happening at museums and artist studios worldwide, as art-nabbers seize valuable sculptures only to sell them for scrap metal at a fraction of their value. Police refer to the crime as “industrial looting,” but it has affected the arts as well as industry.

Other targets of metal theft range from copper wire and downspouts to bronze plaques and urns, but losses have been particularly heartbreaking to creators and owners of valuable artworks. Consider the past couple of years: In Vermont last December, three people were arrested for stealing 30 bronze sculptures worth about $1 million from the North Troy studio of Joel Fisher, whose work has been exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Some of the artwork turned up in nearby scrap metal yards. Also in New York, a 3,000-lb. set of works by Philip Pavia disappeared from a Midtown office building in 2005; fortunately, it was returned by a scrap dealer once he realized that the pieces he’d just bought were stolen. Police suspect thieves were after scrap metal in thefts in New Orleans; Portland, Ore.; and Sedona, Ariz., where eight bronze sculptures weighing at least 3,000 pounds were stolen from the ranch of artist John Waddell. The pieces were worth more than $500,000, but Waddell estimates the thieves would net no more than $5,000 from melting them down.

And the problem ranges around the globe. One of the most famous examples is the disappearance in 2005 of Reclining Figure, a two-ton sculpture by Henry Moore, from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire, England—worth $45 million, but as scrap metal, maybe $10,000. That same year, more than 20 large bronze sculptures were stolen from museums, sculpture gardens and private collections in the London area. Police believe the works were stolen for scrap value, since it would be all but impossible to sell the work. In Ontario in 2006, a statue of a Ukrainian poet was taken from a park; its head turned up at a nearby smelter. Last year in New Zealand, a thief stole a piece titled Lost Horizon from outside a restaurant and threatened that if he didn’t get $10,000, he’d head to a scrap dealer (police apprehended him soon thereafter).

The practice isn’t new, but in recent years there’s been an upswing thanks to the skyrocketing value of copper, a component of the bronze from which so much sculpture is made. Copper is highly desirable in industry because it resists corrosion, conducts heat well and retains as much as 90 percent of its value when melted down. A global construction boom, particularly in China, has heavily increased demand after a decade of decreased supply—according to the website of CSO, a magazine for security executives, mines and mills “had basically taken the ’90s off from creating new mining and smelting capacity because prices were so low for so long and then flagged after 9/11.” Copper’s value increased from about 75 cents a pound in 2004 to more than $3 two years later spurring thefts around the world. CoinNews.net announced, with some exaggeration, that “Copper is the new gold.”

Sometimes the metal dealers themselves help police, as in the New York case. But a Duke Energy representative quoted on the Security Executive site notes that “The scrap metal industry is to some degree an illicit market. . . . You’ve got legitimate players, no doubt, but also a whole lot of illegitimate players.” The site calls scrap yards “an ideal fence” for stolen metal—though tons of metal are also stolen from scrap yards themselves. The demand for copper is high, the risk in stealing large, public sculptures is low and the procedure is simple: Thieves pull up in a van or truck in the thick of night, put the art in the back and drive off. And there’s more bad news for victims: Insurance is often prohibitively expensive.

How concerned should museums be? Demand may lessen in the coming years. Copper’s value has hit a slight decline, and legislators have recognized the problem. Last October, a Michigan state senator introduced legislation that would more closely monitor scrap sellers and dealers. An Illinois law went into effect in January requiring scrap metal processors to record the identity of anyone selling more than $100 worth of metal.

Meanwhile, museums can take simple steps, according to Wilbur Faulk, director of security for the J. Paul Getty Trust for nearly 20 years and now executive vice president of the Cultural Property Protection Group in Northridge, Calif. He voices concern that the “notoriety” of thefts produces copycats but adds that “thieves will mainly go after soft targets. If a museum has security guards, fences and gates, that will deter most people. Smaller museums and galleries may not be able to afford all of these, but it’s the bigger ones that are most likely to have sculpture gardens.

“Museums should see security as an extension of conservation,” Faulk advises. “Any museum that has a sculpture garden should take a step back and consider how their sculptures are protected, especially after hours. Think of how you yourself would steal [your sculptures].” At the Getty, he and the rest of the security staff practiced “friendly attack” drills to anticipate how thieves might approach the museum.

Additionally, an international insurance underwriter offers the following advice in the International Herald Tribune: Owners should “never presume that a sculpture will be too heavy to steal,” says Annabel Fell-Clark. She advises her clients never to leave ladders and wheelbarrows where thieves could put them to use. But “never underestimate a determined thief,” she adds. “They will dismantle walls if necessary, use cranes, helicopters, etc.” Your artwork may not be worth its weight in gold, but to an enterprising thief, it doesn’t have to be.

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