Missing library murals still a mystery PROVINCETOWN — The large murals that disappeared from a Provincetown Public Library storage shed in April are still missing without a clue. The question now is, does anyone really care? According to police, the investigation into their disappearance is ongoing, but detectives’ interviews with potential witnesses have turned up little in return. The police’s current case theory is that someone simply “heard that the murals were to be disposed of and took them for safe-keeping,” wrote Acting Police Chief Jim Golden in an e-mail this week. Without any strong leads, the police initially recommended that the library issue a public appeal for information, but that too has uncovered little in the way of clues. As the months drag on without answers, the notion that the murals were never really that “missed” in the first place has also grown louder. The library board of trustees chair, Jim Johnson, who won election to the board a month after former library director Cheryl Napsha alerted police to the missing murals, said that even the library’s interest in the case has waned. “They don’t have any value and no one seems to want them,” he said. “At this point, it’s kind of like chasing something that’s a waste of time.” The oil murals themselves were painted by artist Steve Toomey and donated to the town’s art collection in 1982. Together, they depicted what the Rose Dorothea schooner would have seen when she sailed into Provincetown Harbor in 1907. They hung at the bow of the model of the Rose Dorothea in the Heritage Museum until it was transformed into the Provincetown Public Library back in 2002. But even the artist who spent two years painting the historical vista on six fourfoot- by-eight-foot masonite panels has raised doubts about their lasting worth. According to Johnson, Toomey himself has stated that the murals have no value and that he’d actually prefer they not be shown in public again. The tired state of the shed where the murals had been stored has also raised doubts about their most recent condition. The shed, which serves as a storage space for used books, has long been a candidate for a complete tear-down, Johnson said. “It’s basically condemned at this point,” he said. “Most of the books it houses have been damaged beyond salvaging.” Still, the mere fact that six large murals painted on heavy masonite material would suddenly go missing has continued to stir questions. “That’s why we asked for an investigation in the first place,” Johnson said, “because we had no clue as to how or where they went missing.” For now, police are continuing to conduct interviews and are still piecing together an unclear timeline of the disappearance, Golden said. He noted that the library board of trustees first noticed the murals missing in February, but waited nearly three months before making the police aware of the loss. The lock on the shed was also changed at least three times between the Friends of the Provincetown Library and the former library director before she left in May, he said. In September the trustees began discussing whether the town’s historical commission or art commission might want to take up a larger role in the search for the missing murals. For now, that remains to be seen and the library shed is still a crime scene. “At this point, it’s kind of like chasing something that’s a waste of time.” — Jim Johnson, chair of the Provincetown Library Board of Trustees By Erik Borg BANNER CORRESPONDENT
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 10:43:37 +0000
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