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Page Vol. 86 Issue 16
Theft of art in the park
Museum solicits help from community to find stolen sculpture
Feb. 14, 2020
What’s in store! Rams basketball Pg. 2
Ixchel Sotelo, staff writer
Belles basketball Pg. 2
Away games update Pg. 2
Student submissions Pg. 3
Crossword/Sudoku Pg. 4
Sidewalk survey Pg. 5
Bernie Sanders Pg. 5
Alpha Sigma Phi Pg. 6
Photos courtesy of San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts: The complete sculpture is displayed in the Museum before being placed in Sunken Garden Park. The fish ornament was cut and removed from the metal vines, which attached to the base. An employee of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts on Jan. 29 discovered a piece of a sculpture had been stolen from Sunken Garden Park. “We were inspecting the park on Wednesday morning because there had been storms,” said Laura Huckaby, SAMFA assistant director and collections manager. “We asked the facilities manager to go over and check to make sure there was no storm damage.” The loaned sculpture, titled “Life Aquatic” by Wesley Blossom of Colorado, is a figure of a fish swimming beneath a log among aquatic plants. Blossom brought the sculpture to San Angelo for the 2019 Sixth Biennial Richard and Pam Salmon International Sculpture Competition Exhibition. The fish, the central element of the sculpture, was cut off with a pair of wire or bolt cutters. “The sculptor is honestly heartbroken,” Huckaby said. “He and his wife traveled all the way down here for the opening of the show in
October. The part of the sculpture that was stolen is the core and the key idea to the whole thing. It was the part he built first and spent over four months on.” The incident caused the museum to change from weekly park inspections to checking on the sculptures daily and sparked interest for installing security cameras. “Exhibiting art in a public park that’s open to everybody at all hours, it’s the beauty of it, but it’s also the risk,” Huckaby said. “We can hope something like this won’t happen, but now that it has, we think it may make artists more reluctant in the future to participate in the show or even want to bring art to San Angelo, unfortunately. We’re hoping for the best, that it can be found, and resolved positively.” If you have any information that could lead to the recovery of the sculpture, please call the San Angelo Police Department non-emergency dispatch at 325-657-4315.
A seminar for modern entrepreneurs The Free Market Institute organizes series on past and present lucrative business Mbulelo Maqungo, staff writer
The Texas Tech University Free Market Institute at ASU on Feb. 6 held a speaker series about the effects of entrepreneurship on society and culture. Dr. Russell Sobel, professor of economics and entrepreneurship at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina, presented the inaugural presentation. Sobel described different ways individuals and governing bodies can promote entrepreneurship and economic development in the present day. Students, faculty and representatives from the City of San Angelo Business Resource Center were all in attendance. “The definition of entrepreneurship, at its core, is the mixing and matching of resources to produce a good for the public,” Sobel said. Sobel presented a slideshow with historical examples of entrepreneurship ranging from the evolution of bathtubs to the capabilities of most cars. “The last 10 years of base model Honda Accord have a faster zero to 60 than most of the classic muscle cars you see in TV or movies,” Sobel said. “Do you know what allowed horsepower to become so accessible to common people? The innovation of people with entrepreneurial drive.” Many of those in the auditorium were business majors or international economics students interested in furthering their understanding of public policy and macroeconomics. “I heard about this in my class as an extra credit opportunity,” senior Tony Jones said after the presentation. “There were things that I heard before, but I still learned some things and walked out with a different perspective.”
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“He was an active speaker,” senior Callie Martin said. “He knows how to keep a crowd entertained.” The Texas Tech University Free Market Institute at ASU was launched during the academic year 2019-2020. According to their website, the TTU Free Market Institute at ASU aims to advance research and teaching in economics in support of the mission of the Norris-Vincent College of Business at ASU. The Free Market Institute will have another presentation over the rise of political capitalism on March 19.
Graphic by Dominic Rodriguez
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