Where is Indiana Jones when you need him?
The Old Pueblo has lost its Ark, and the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation is organizing a search for the almost 60-year-old sculpture once on display at Reid Park Zoo.
In a pair of Facebook posts over the past week, the foundation asked for the public’s help to track down the piece known as Noah’s Ark, or simply the Ark, which appears to have disappeared from a fenced storage area at the zoo some time after February of 2017.
“We’d like to see it found and reintroduced to the public in some way,” said foundation CEO Demion Clinco.
The painted-fiberglass-and-concrete sculpture with the steel base was originally commissioned by the Catalina Foothills School District in 1966 to decorate its new elementary school on River Road just east of Campbell Avenue.
Artist Charles Clement created the whimsical abstract boat as a companion piece for his sculpted mural of animals that covered the wall of the school’s courtyard.
When the building at 2099 E. River was sold to the Junior League of Tucson in 1985, the Ark was donated to the city and relocated to the zoo, where children would climb on it or pose for pictures while peeking through its portholes.
A dedication ceremony is held on June 1, 1985, for Charles Clement's Noah's Ark sculpture, after it was relocated to Reid Park Zoo from an elementary school on River Road near Campbell Avenue.
“I remember it as a kid,” Clinco said.
The city even held a dedication ceremony to unveil the Ark at its new home, and the sculpture stayed on display there for decades, before eventually being moved into storage in a fenced service area off of the zoo’s main parking lot.
Clinco said a visitor snapped a picture of the sculpture during a behind-the-scenes tour of the zoo in 2011, and from that he was able to locate it in aerial images of the property for several years after that. “You can see the shadow of the sculpture with the portholes and the frame,” he said.
A visitor on a behind-the-scenes tour of Reid Park Zoo snapped this picture of Noah's Ark in storage in 2011.
After 2017, though, the Ark is nowhere to be found.
Clinco said the Tucson Parks and Recreation Department, Reid Park Zoo staff and the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona are now searching for the sculpture or any paperwork indicating what might have happened to it.
City officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Ark shouldn’t be hard to find, Clinco said. “It’s the size of a small automobile. It’s not some small tabletop piece of art.”
He said city policy requires a “formal deaccession process” any time a piece of public art is disposed of, but he’s seen no evidence of that in this case.
“It’s definitely a concern that there has been no documentation or record of something that must have happened fairly recently,” he said. “It’s definitely troubling that the public process that should have occurred did not occur.”
Clinco described Clement as “an important mid-century-modern artist” whose work includes such familiar pieces of public art as the relief sculptures on Tucson’s Transamerica Building and the fountain in El Presidio Plaza, which was built in 1971 and restored by the city in 2023.
Noah's Ark sculptor Charles Clement also designed El Presidio Park Fountain in downtown, which was constructed in 1971 and restored by the city in 2023.
Clinco said Clement also created the abstract fiberglass screen at the entrance to the Administrative Building at the University of Arizona and an intricate modernist mosaic in the foyer of the Nebraska State Capitol, along with decorative features for several Tucson businesses.
The New York-born artist lived and worked in Tucson from 1950 until his death in 1981 at the age of 59.
The Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation has served as the exclusive curator of Clement’s work since 2021. Earlier this month, the nonprofit group announced the acquisition of the Bondante House, a 1956 mid-century modern Tucson home that Clement designed for his sister-in-law, Mary Bondante, and her husband, Aldo.
If the city did dispose of the Ark, the Clement estate apparently wasn’t notified about it.
According to the artist’s niece, Chris Bondante, there was “no consultation” with the family when the sculpture was quietly removed from public view at the zoo and no information provided to them since then about its whereabouts.
The Ark as it looked in 1966, the year it was installed at the Catalina Foothills School District's new elementary school on River Road just east of Campbell Avenue.
“The apparent lack of transparency and failure to follow established protocols appears to violate the City of Tucson’s own administrative policies regarding the management of public art,” Bondante said in a written statement on behalf of the estate. “We are alarmed that this significant work by Charles Clement has been potentially lost.”
Clinco hasn’t given up on the Ark just yet. Hence the Facebook posts, which he said have already led to a few interesting tips.
“The hope is that someone will see this and say, ‘Oh, I know where that is,’” he said. “It’s my genuine hope that the sculpture will be located.”
Kids play on Noah’s Ark, a sculpture created by artist Charles Clement, at the Catalina Foothills School on Sept. 7, 1966. The piece was donated to the city of Tucson in 1985 for display at Reid Park Zoo, but it has since gone missing.
