Moved for a Week of Repairs, Moore Sculpture 'Disappears'

No, it's not your imagination. Harvard's Henry Moore scupture--an abstract work of a reclining woman--has disappeared from its usual resting place across from Lamont Library.

Removed in the early hours yesterday morning for repairs, the statue's now vacant base caused a great deal of curiosity among onlookers.

"The piece was taken off view for conservation purposes," Susannah J. Fabling, assistant director of the Fogg Museum, said yesterday. She added that the statue needs to be rewelded between its lower and upright portions.

Saul L. Chafin, chief of University police, said he has received many calls about the missing art work, which was removed at 4:00 a.m. after police blocked off Quincy Street.

"Everyone was buzzing about the missing statue," Jane R. Morhardt, a librarian at Lamont Library, said. "It took an entire day to bring it in with an enormous crane.... Then it disappeared over night with no footprints."

Before the statue could be moved to the Paul King foundry in Johnston, R.I., for a week of repairs, it was dismantled and lifted onto a truck with a crane. Moore's sculpture, valued at $500,000 and donated by David Bakalar '46, was first installed across from Lamont Library on September 12.

Ho Ho Ho

Chafin said many of the callers thought that the statue had been stolen. "I was rolling on the floor laughing, trying to picture the guy who could steal the five-ton sculpture," he added.

"There's more attention now at the space than there ever was at the statue," Colleen A. Bryant, a worker at Lamont's circulation desk, said.

Early yesterday afternoon Fogg Museum workers placed a sign in front of the empty base which said only that the sculpture has been" temporarily removed for conservation." Passers-by were confused by the sign, which Fabling said means that the statue requires repairs, at an as-yet-undetermined cost.

"I feel like there's a void in my Harvard existence," Peter D. Folger '85 said, adding, "Now there's nothing to talk about on the way to the Union."