Folk Art Stolen From House of Blues

Two works of folk art were stolen last month from the House of Blues, a Harvard Square restaurant and nightclub, employees of the restaurant said yesterday.

Calvin Livingston's "Afro of Thorn" was taken from the restaurant's entrance around March 12, said restaurant art curator Carole J. Crittenden. Later the same day, Pam Roberts's "Save the Last Dance for Me" was found missing from an upstairs room, she said.

"It's really a horrible thing to have happened," said Amy R. Arroyo, an employee of the House of Blues.

Police have no leads about the thefts, Crittenden said.

"I can't imagine whoever stole them," she said. "I hope they would enjoy them and they wouldn't try to sell them."

The two works were by little-known artists and were not widely collected, so they were of minimal resale value, Crittenden said. But since they were part of the original collection they were valuable to the restaurant, she added.

"Because they were both gifts they had an intrinsic value," she said.

The theft was the first in the House of Blues' history.

"We've never had this happen to us," Crittenden said. "The vibe in the House of Blues has always been, 'our house is your house.' There's never been any sort of security for the artwork."

Crittenden said despite the thefts, no new precautions have been taken.

"We've gone over all the security mounts to make sure all the pieces are mounted and you'd need special tools to get them off, but we haven't made an attempt to put Plexiglas over them," she said.

No reward is being offered, Crittenden said.

"We are appealing to people's sense of justice and fair play," she said.

Livingston's sculpture was one of two works in the restaurant that belonged to the International House of Blues Foundation, which promotes education about art and the blues, Arroyo said. She described the piece as "a slab of wood with colored engravings."

Roberts's poster-size painting, which Arroyo said depicted a skeleton in a flamenco outfit, originally belonged to the private collection of House of Blues founder Isaac Tigrett.

The House of Blues is a chain of rock and blues nightclubs across the country. The seven House of Blues branches nationwide house the largest collection of "outsider" folk art in the world, with more than 8,000 pieces, manager Becky A. Nolan said.

Outsider art, which unlike more traditional folk art is usually created by painters and sculptors with no formal training, has become increasingly popular, Nolan said.

"It's becoming a lot more well-known recently," she said.

The Cambridge club is the original House of Blues and the smallest, Arroyo said. Most of the pieces at the Cambridge location originally belonged to Tigrett.

The Square establishment contains more than 200 original works, Crittenden said.