Popular giant crow sculptures defaced in SF.'s Panhandle

Two giant crow sculptures that were placed in San Francisco's Panhandle as part of a citywide art initiative were badly defaced over the weekend - and though they have been cleaned off, organizers warned Monday that any more acts of vandalism could imperil the future of the installation.

The crows, made of bronze and weighing a ton each, were tagged with graffiti in white paint that stretched over their black surfaces from beak to tail. The defacement came two months after the birds, named Tom and Lucinda, were installed by Cotati artist Jack Champion. 

The display, titled "An Attempted Murder" - a play on the collective term for a group of crows - is sponsored by the Big Art Loop, a privately funded civic campaign to get oversize works of art out of storage and into public spaces in the parks of San Francisco.

"The vandalism of Jack Champion's An Attempted Murder is a disheartening act that we condemn in the strongest terms," said Aliza Marks, CEO of Big Art Loop. "This is not creative expression - it is destruction, and it harms the artists and communities these works belong to."

Champion told the Chronicle that he came to San Francisco with graffiti remover Monday morning and started scrubbing the white paint off the black birds. When neighbors saw him at work, they came out to pitch in as if it were a car wash.

"It was really great," Champion said. "They brought buckets and ladders."

He noted that though the birds were clean, they will require a new coat of patina after they come home in a year.

"It was a triage job, but I expect graffiti to happen. That's the world we live in," he said. "I'm pretty lucky. It's been up for like three months."

Marks said the sculpture would be restored to its original finish at Big Art Loop's expense. But she warned that if vandalism were to happen again or become a pattern, the sculptures would probably be removed.

"When it happens repeatedly, it changes the real cost of placing and maintaining these installations," Marks said. "At some point, that math becomes impossible - and San Francisco loses the ambitious, imaginative works that make our public spaces worth walking through. That is a loss no city should accept."  

Champion did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The installation is scheduled to run for one year. Like many of the other works brought out of storage through the Big Art Loop program, "An Attempted Murder" made its debut at the Burning Man countercultural event in northern Nevada more than a dozen years ago.

It was brought back by Building 180, an arts company that is curating the Big Art Loop. The company finds locations for artworks, gets feedback from neighbors and submits the proposed installations to the Recreation and Park Department for approval. Artists are paid a fee for loaning and installing their work. 

The Big Art Loop launched in September 2025, and to date 23 pieces have been installed out of a goal of 100. There have been minor acts of vandalism - but nothing on the scale of  "An Attempted Murder," Marks said.   

"This moment only deepens our resolve. We will restore this piece, and we will keep going - with more artists and more installations across the city this year," Marks vowed. "But making San Francisco beautiful is a shared responsibility." 

Tom and Lucinda stand in the grass near a playground along a heavily traveled pedestrian corridor. Facing each other with beaks open in a posture "that suggests disagreement, friction, maybe even conflict," according to the Big Art Loop website, they have attracted attention from the day they were installed. 

"I couldn't ask for a better setting," said the artist, Champion, while visiting on a Sunday in May. "There are constantly people here interacting with them."

While engaging with the sculptures is encouraged, vandalism is unacceptable, organizers said.

"Artists take the creative risk, the city offers its shared spaces, and all of us have a role in protecting what belongs to everyone," said Marks. "We're asking San Franciscans to stand with us in defense of the public art this city deserves."   

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