SARASOTA, Fla. — The state of a statue in Sarasota has had many locals and tourists talking for some months. The head on one of Sarasota's popular and recognizable set of statues at St. Armands Circle is missing.
"It had no head and I realized it doesn't have any hands. At first, I thought maybe it was like a long time ago when they were bringing it over that its head fell off," said 7-year-old Chloe Elefterion, a second-grader, and tourist from New York.
In January, someone vandalized the statue and damaged it significantly. The once beautiful statue, Music, one of the "Seven Virtues of Sarasota", lost not only her head but an arm, fingers, and her beloved harp.
"Why would you do that, it's just a perfectly fine statue that people want to take pictures with," said Chloe.
As the city began planning out how to repair the statue and others like it, staff with the Public Works Department ran into some complex challenges. The statues, which adorn St Armands Circle, are among 21 statues gifted to the City of Sarasota in 2008 by the St. Armands Association.
The gift at that time came with a five-year maintenance allowance which had been exhausted and had long expired. This meant that a $12,000 repair cost presented to the city through a bid is not in any part of the city's budget and would have to come from somewhere else.
A city spokesperson said staff hopes to team up with the community to help out with ways to generate funds to effect repairs as soon as possible.
"I understand that Public Works probably doesn't have a statue reclaiming artist on their payroll. I do think it needs to happen but it is just a shame that somebody would even do this," said Jim Hallman, a Sarasota resident.
The city says it'll work with the St. Armands Business Improvement District and community groups to preserve and repair the statues. The repair plan could also include repositioning the statues.
"If it got knocked over by some people, it wasn't secured safely. How about if it landed on somebody, you know? Some of these statues should be secured so somebody can knock them over," said Fred Mohr, a firefighter visiting from New Jersey.
"These are beautiful statues, it's a beautiful place, and once you let one thing get damaged and you let it go, you're gonna let everything else get damaged," Mohr said.
The Office of Public Art now wants to create a special category for "Cultural Amenities" as early as next year, to help maintain all public art going forward.
"Perhaps there's some extra tourist tax or something that can contribute. With all the construction that's going on I'm sure there's money flowing around somewhere here," said Craig Marc-Aurele, a tourist from Boston.
"I mean we'll pay an extra few percent," said Madison Estes also of Boston.
Sarasota police said there were no known witnesses to the incident nor were there any security cameras in the vicinity that captured what happened. Because of that, they have been unable to identify any suspects in order to make an arrest connected to the vandalism of the statue.
"Maybe they were just having a bad day and took out their anger on the statue," said Chloe.