Attic Salt for April 20, 2008

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Apr 20, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

WHOOOse got the owl?

Over the years, the Baton Rouge Art League, which turns 75 next year, has had pieces in its collection “walk away.”

That’s how ladies of the league refer to suspected thefts and loaned pieces that weren’t returned.

One of those pieces, a small owl by sculptor John Walker, disappeared on Wanda Foote’s watch in 1965. Foote was president of the league that year.

Foote, 85, sounds like this: On meeting her future husband, John, at Sears and Roebuck: “I took one look at him, and I was a gone gosling.”

At a meeting of the Art League, Foote was talking about the missing owl as though it had “walked away” yesterday.

“Well, why don’t you give it back?” cracked one of the ladies.

“Everybody laughed, but it got me to thinking,” Foote said. “Don’t you know I’d collapse with joy if I could put it back.”

The league’s 70-odd piece collection includes Works Progress Administration art and the work of other Louisiana artists. The collection is kept at the Louisiana State Archives, 3851 Essen Lane,  where no art from the league’s collection has gone strolling. To see pieces in the Art League collection, go to http://www.sos.louisiana. gov, click on archives, then collections.

Other pieces believed stolen from the collection or borrowed but not returned are John Ankeney’s “Mexican Farmer,” “Houseboat” by France Folse and two paintings by Mary Lou Stockwell — “Banana Trees” and “Baton Rouge Levee.”

“‘The Owl’ was on display at the Old State Capitol,” Foote said. “I didn’t know it was missing for several weeks until someone said, ‘You know, they got the owl.’”

The flown owl, Foote said, is like having a missing tooth.

“I just feel like the time is right for someone to return it,” she said.