A quirky public art installation celebrating the 270th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been disrupted after more than 200 golden statuettes of the maestro vanished in his hometown of Salzburg, Austria.
In mid-July, the Mozarteum Foundation, which preserves the composer’s museum and archives, launched the public installation “Mozart—The Untameable Genius,” placing 320 statuettes in groupings throughout the city, at Mirabell Gardens, as well as inside Mozart’s house and the wooden hut where he composed The Magic Flute (1791). Designed by German conceptual artist Ottmar Hörl, the 20-inch-tall plastic figurines depict Mozart in the company of his dog, Pimperl.
“I didn’t want to do a monument of Mozart. There are already enough of these,” Hörl told the Associated Press. “I wanted to show his human side, that he was a normal human being despite his genius.” Unfortunately, visitors to Salzburg didn’t have long to appreciate the full scale of Mozart’s humanity. At the end of July, more than 80 of the statuettes had disappeared. By August 12, only 110 were left.
Ottmar Hörl’s work on display at the Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg. Photo: Barbara Gindl/AFP/Getty Images.
The Mozarteum Foundation has now announced the closure of the Mirabell Gardens portion of the installation, though visitors can still see a more widely spaced-out exhibition of the mini Mozarts at his one-time residence until August 30. The foundation had hoped to replenish the statuettes, but was unable to do so because the manufacturer is on summer holiday.
Neither the Mozarteum Foundation nor Hörl responded to a request for comment.
In comments given to the German news agency dpa, Hörl said he did not think regular visitors had stolen the statuettes, but rather that it was an “organized theft.” The artist had planned on selling the golden mini Mozarts for €90 ($104) each, which puts the loss at around €20,000 ($23,000).
Ottmar Hoerl poses with his colourful Goethe sculptures in front of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Photo: Roland Holschneider/picture alliance/ Getty Images.
This is not the first time Hörl’s work has been targeted. In 2023, the artist created “You’re Welcome,” which placed 115 golden statuettes of Richard Wagner outside an opera house in Bayreuth, Germany, the 19th-century composer’s adopted hometown. All of the statuettes disappeared and a local police investigation led nowhere.
Serial miniature sculptures are Hörl’s specialty and he has previously filled the Emperor’s Courtyard in Munich with 2,000 lions, landed 400 Goethe statues outside the writer’s namesake university in Frankfurt, and placed 60 cross-legged Greta Thunberg figures in the Kunsthalle Schweinfurt in Germany.