After months of searching, a sculpture stolen from a North Dakota art museum has turned up next to a casino dumpster

A sculpture that was stolen from the North Dakota Museum of Art seven months ago was found next to a dumpster at the nearby Southgate Casino, Bar and Grill. Luckily for the two people who spotted the work, the museum had offered $1,000 for its safe return.

Disc-shaped garden wheel by artist Elizabeth MacDonald is made of ceramic tiles and had stood in the museum’s sculpture garden since 1998. A GoFundMe page seeking to raise $10,000 to replace the work described it as “part of the public identity of the museum”. The campaign was launched after an extensive but unsuccessful search, which even saw the Grand Forks Sheriff’s Department scan the English Lane, a nearby natural waterway.

The artwork was stolen on October 31 last year and police were notified of its whereabouts on May 25. Who took it and what happened to the sculpture between those two dates remains a mystery, according to the Herald of Grand Forks. Both the museum and police have said they have no plans to investigate the incident further.

“It was a shock to everyone, I think, that he was coming back,” museum director Matthew Wallace said. Herald. “We just don’t know what happened to him or where he has been. We’re just glad it’s back and can be fixed.

After a renovation in 2022, the wheel had been given pride of place in the most prominent place in the garden. It seems the thieves arrived just in time, as the wheel is brought inside each fall and reinstalled in the spring to protect it from the winter elements.

Despite the wheel’s fragility, it was found in relatively good condition with only about six broken tiles. It will only need minor repairs before returning to public display, and it is hoped that MacDonald might still have some of the original tiles, which would otherwise need to be matched and redone.

These quick fixes should be partially covered by the $775 that was raised on GoFundMe. The campaign page also promised that the museum was working to install new security cameras and make the sculpture “more difficult to steal”.

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