[MSN] Chicago. A 5-foot-long brass rifle, last seen in the possession of a grizzled Iroquois fur trapper, has mysteriously vanished from a Lombard office complex.

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Sculpture in Lombard is disarmed
Theories abound after rifle on reproduction of "The Mountain Man" disappears
from office courtyard
By Steve Schmadeke

Special to the Tribune

August 24, 2007

 A 5-foot-long brass rifle, last seen in the possession of a grizzled
Iroquois fur trapper, has mysteriously vanished from a Lombard office
complex.

The rifle, part of an 11-foot-tall bronze reproduction of Frederic
Remington's famous sculpture "The Mountain Man," was reported stolen a week
ago from the courtyard at Butterfield Centre. The $80,000 statue,
commissioned by Waste Management for the courtyard more than a decade ago,
is surrounded on three sides by trees and is not visible from Butterfield
Road. Security cameras are not trained on the courtyard.

Police called it an unusual crime.

"Either somebody put it up over their fireplace or sent it to a scrap dealer
and got $100," said Deputy Police Chief Dane Cuny, offering the department's
theories on what happened to the oversize rifle.

Michael Mickevitt, an agent for the trust that bought the building from
Waste Management in 1999, said he doesn't think it was an inside job.

"I find it hard to believe that it would be any of my tenants, but you just
don't know," he said. "And I find it hard to believe someone would take the
time to snap it off just for $100. Maybe they're building their own statue.
I'm going on eBay to see if I can find it."

Mickevitt said he believes that the rifle, which lay across the trapper's
lap, was broken off by people hanging on either side of the weapon. The
mountain man, depicted riding a horse down a steep hill, remains equipped
with a Bowie knife, a riding crop and some traps. Hornets have built a nest
in the horse's tail.

Remington was "the single greatest sculptor of the American West," and
reproductions of "The Mountain Man," designed in 1903 and originally only a
couple of feet tall, can be found in towns across the U.S., said Jim
Balinger, director of the Phoenix Art Museum and writer of a book about
Remington.

The sculpture depicts a fur trapper in a buckskin jacket and beaver-pelt hat
descending a steep mountain slope on horseback with his left hand holding
the reins.

"What makes the original sculpture particularly wonderful is it's a real
acute angle that the horse is going down ... unlike any other you've ever
seen before. But the rider is very erect," Balinger said.

Curators at the Frederic Remington Art Museum in upstate New York had
trouble with visitors stealing the rifle off their sculpture not long after
the museum opened in 1923 and before tougher security measures were imposed.
Staffers apparently had to ask Roman Bronze Works to cast more copies of the
rifle as replacements, said curator Laura Foster, who said some of the
spares are still in the museum's vault.

"People would just steal the guns," she said. "It's amazing what people will
do."

When Remington's copyright on the sculpture expired in the 1960s,
reproduction statues flooded the market, Foster said, adding that the museum
gets about a dozen calls and e-mails a day from people who think they own an
original.

"You can't get away from them," Foster said of the copies. "New ones are
sold in antique stores, jewelry stores, boutiques. You go to any city, and
by golly, there's a Remington. You see someone who just left the antique
store with a Remington and figure that person is on their way to call the
museum."

The Remington reproduction outside Butterfield Centre, home to corporations
such as Waste Management, 7-Eleven and Veolia Environmental Services, sits
in a courtyard that is a popular spot for workers to eat lunch or have a
smoke.

But few workers, even those whose offices overlook the statue, noticed that
the rifle was missing.

"I had no idea," said Susan Zdarsky, a banking specialist who was eating
lunch in the courtyard recently. "I've looked at it, admired it the first
couple times I saw it, but I didn't notice it was gone.

"It's sad any time someone damages a piece of art." 

Copyright C 2007, Chicago Tribune