{"id":67399,"date":"2025-10-09T08:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T08:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/67399\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T08:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T08:36:07","slug":"wellington-waterfronts-water-whirler-damaged-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/67399\/","title":{"rendered":"Wellington waterfront’s ‘Water Whirler’ damaged again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Len<\/p>\n

\nA lone seagull stands vigil over Len Lye’s damaged ‘Water Whirler’ sculpture on Wellington’s waterfront.
\nPhoto: RNZ\/Bill Hickman\n<\/p>\n

An iconic sculpture on Wellington’s waterfront has snapped again, after being fixed only a year ago.<\/p>\n

Wellington City Council said Len Lye’s Water Whirler, a wand-like sculpture, snapped on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

“It appears no person was involved in the breakage,” a spokesperson said. “We’ll work to retrieve the broken section and get a fix done as soon as possible, after we’ve investigated the cause of the break.”<\/p>\n

An RNZ reporter passing the motorised kinetic sculpture said it appeared to have been reduced to a stump.<\/p>\n

The Water Whirler was last repaired in October 2024, 18 months after it was removed<\/a>, following a vandal attack in April 2023.<\/p>\n

The sculpture was also broken in 2018<\/a>, when a man climbed the artwork, snapping it in two.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lone seagull stands vigil over Len Lye’s damaged ‘Water Whirler’ sculpture on Wellington’s waterfront. Photo: RNZ\/Bill Hickman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,48,47,501,156,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-67399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}