LISTEN: Bring back Blue Baby, La Crosse

It’s been gone a year and a half now, but one UW-La Crosse student is taking it upon herself to try and bring back “Blue Baby.” Ashlyn Neader stopped into the WIZM studio for La Crosse Talk PM last week to talk about her petition to bring back a piece of art in the city of La Crosse called Hatched Baby.

La Crosse Talk PM airs weekdays at 5:06 p.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

Mayor Mitch Reynolds will be on La Crosse Talk PM on Monday to likely discuss the artwork, which is still in the city’s possesssion.

If you don’t know, Hatched Baby was a 9-foot tall statue of a blue baby’s head coming out of an egg. It was created by Wolfgang Auer, a German artist from La Crosse’s sister city of Friedberg, Germany, and donated to the city. It was vandalized in September of 2021, and deemed irreparable, thus removed from its perch in front of the city’s police headquarters.

Neader’s main reasoning behind the campaign is because she feels Hatched Baby’s destruction is not representative of who the people of La Crosse are. She hopes to get the statue fixed by Auer and put back on display.

Sign the petition here.