More than 200 gold-colored Mozart figures have vanished from a public art installation in Salzburg, forcing organizers to end part of the exhibition early. The Mozarteum Foundation said 210 of the 320 figures installed in the city's Mirabell Garden had disappeared.
The theft has disrupted a major public art project marking the 270th anniversary of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth in his home city. The figures had been placed in the Mirabell Garden and at several Mozart-related sites around Salzburg. Several dozen figures remain on display at the Mozarteum and Mozart's birthplace until the end of August.
The polymer figures, created by German conceptual artist Ottmar Hörl, depict Mozart with his dog Pimperl. Hörl said he wanted to show Mozart "as a normal human being despite his genius" rather than as a monument. The 50-centimeter figures were planned to be sold after the exhibition for around €90 each, putting the loss at roughly €20,000.
Hörl said he did not believe tourists had simply walked off with the figures. "This is organized theft," he said, suggesting they were probably taken at night after the garden had closed. Organizers had kept some replacement figures in reserve, but not enough to offset the scale of the theft, and the manufacturer is on summer holiday, leaving no quick way to replace them.
A previous Hörl display in Bayreuth suffered a similar fate when 100 figures of composer Richard Wagner disappeared. "That's just the nature of public space," Hörl said. "When you work as an artist in a public space, you mustn't complain about what is happening there. It ranges from destruction to theft."
