Who’d Steal Lincoln’s Hand? Art Theft Baffles Illinois Museum

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Someone stole Abraham Lincoln’s hand.

The crime had no witnesses. There are no suspects. The police are not even certain when the hand disappeared.

About all anyone knows is that a plaster sculpture of the 16th president’s hand, proudly displayed for years at the Kankakee County Museum, has been missing from its shelf since at least Dec. 11.

Any art theft would be jarring in Kankakee, a working-class city about an hour’s drive south of Chicago, but because of its connection to Lincoln, the loss of this sculpture has touched a nerve here.

More than 150 years since the former Illinois legislator ascended to the presidency, Lincoln remains ubiquitous in this state. His face is on the license plates. Illinois calls itself the “Land of Lincoln.” And along the interstate near the Kankakee exit, a giant statue of Honest Abe greets passing motorists from the parking lot of an equipment rental company.

“Lincoln is a local treasure for us,” said Chief Larry Regnier of the Kankakee police, whose department is investigating the theft. So far, Chief Regnier said, promising leads have been hard to come by.

Museum officials had thought that the theft might have been a prank, and that the plaster study would resurface in a few days. The police hoped someone might provide information about the theft after seeing a Facebook post by the department, which included photographs and described the hand as roughly “the size of a 8-10 pound ham.” The local newspaper, The Daily Journal, published an editorial pleading for the thief to come forward.

“We are blessed to have such a fine museum with an impressive inventory,” the editorial said, “but the collection is not complete without Lincoln’s hands.”

The hand was the work of George Grey Barnard, a sculptor who spent part of his boyhood in Kankakee around the time that Lincoln was assassinated, and whose admiration of Lincoln was a recurring theme in his art. The sculpture was displayed along with other renderings of Lincoln in a wing of the county historical museum built specifically to showcase Mr. Barnard’s work.

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