A 12-foot-tall bust of Elon Musk in Texas was defaced over the weekend, according to the owner of the property where the artwork is located.
The landowner, Eleazar Villafranca, told ABC News that passersby alerted him on Saturday to the damage, and, on Monday, he confirmed in-person deep gouges on the bust’s eye, chin, and back.
“There are like three or four pieces they cut with a knife,” Villafranca said, adding that it was constructed from a rubbery material.
The work has been sitting on Villafranca’s property for close to a year, he said. Villafranca added that he reached out to the artist behind the bust regarding the vandalism, but having received no response, asked another artist to repair the artwork.
The Cameron County Sheriff’s Office was also notified of the incident, though no suspect has been identified.
The statue appears to be the same one that was towed behind a Tesla Cybertruck in Brownsville, Texas, last summer. At the time, a French tech entrepreneur who went by the name “Louis XXII” told ARTnews that he had commissioned the work to bring visibility to a viral meme of a bad drawing of Musk posted on Reddit six years ago.
This is only the latest in a string of vandalism targeting symbols of the Tesla CEO and White House advisor since he effectively took control of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). At the helm of DOGE, Musk has pursued dramatic federal staff reductions and broad budget cuts while investing millions of dollars in a conservative candidate for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election. That court is set to deliberate on a lawsuit regarding opening Tesla dealerships in the state.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has devoted significant resources toward pressuring arts and culture institutions to align with its priorities and ideology via executive orders and funding cuts. Staffers at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provides resources to museums and libraries across the US, were put on leave by DOGE earlier this month. Also this month, DOGE recommended that the National Endowment for the Humanities cut up to 80 percent of its staff, and many grant recipients reported receiving cancellation of their grants.
