The shorter they are, the quicker they fall.

The fate of a public sculpture at Eighth and Massachusetts streets seems to have confirmed that variation on the adage.

“Self Portrait as a Midget” — El Paso, Texas, artist Gary Mark’s contribution to the 2004 Outdoor Downtown Sculpture Exhibition — lasted about two weeks before city officials had to remove it.

The piece probably will be moved to a more secure location, but discussions still are under way.

The quintet of dwarfish figures arranged in a circle and finished in bright metallic paint had been attracting more attention than any of the show’s seven other pieces.

But not all the attention was positive.

“Some parents watched as their children hit them in the head or kicked their shins. Some college-aged boys humped their heads roughly while laughing at their cleverness,” said arts commissioner Jeff Ridgway, who observed the activity while dining at a nearby restaurant.

“A couple of grade-schoolers tried to pull them over. It made me wonder why abusing those little guys was so appealing. I lost my appetite,” Ridgway said.

As of Tuesday, at least one of the little men had been harassed so much that he could no longer stand on his own.

The midgets were fixed to a carpeted steel platform with a single bolt in the back of each foot. That wasn’t enough to withstand frequent rocking motions inflicted by passersby.

“We decided to take it down because of the attractive nuisance aspect of that location,” said Michael Tubbs, city liaison to the arts commission. “The artist has requested that the city place it in a new location and continue to display the piece.”

DiAnne Damro, chairwoman of the arts commission, said she favored that solution. The site under consideration is the courtyard between the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center and the Douglas County Courthouse, where there’s a law enforcement presence nearly 24 hours a day.

“I’d hate to see it in a warehouse,” Damro said, noting that “Self Portrait as a Midget” seemed to be one of the most popular pieces in this year’s show.

No one was more surprised by the damage than the artist, who said the sculpture had been displayed in four other U.S. cities — most recently Mesa, Ariz. — without similar problems. He said he planned to send tie-down straps for the midgets’ feet so future tugging wouldn’t upend his little men.

6News video: Sculpture removed due to vandalism Sculptures add whimsy to downtown (6-13-04) Photo gallery with juror commentary: 2004 Outdoor Downtown Sculpture Exhibition

As for the vandals’ motives, Mark said he found it hard to believe anyone would feel ill will toward the figures, whose faces are based loosely on his own.

“If you see a midget in public, you want to look at them but you’re not supposed to,” said Mark, who is 6 feet tall. “I was just trying to put myself in that situation, looking out.”

Ridgway, who sat on the three-person committee that determined whether the sculptures chosen by juror Rachael Blackburn Cozad would withstand elemental and human abuse, admitted he was a little disappointed that the artist displayed the midget figures facing each other with spaces between them. The piece was selected based on a slide that showed the men facing outward, shoulder-to-shoulder.

“That’s why we put them where they were is because we thought that they would be sturdy,” Ridgway said. “This really isn’t a very good design.”

Still, Ridgway is fond of the sculpture, for which Mark received a $750 honorarium.

“The thing that shocked me the most was watching parents stand there and watch their children try to deface the art, like, ‘Oh, isn’t that cute. A future art critic,'” Ridgway said, half-joking. “But maybe if you’ve got a town full of artists, you have to have some art critics in there as well.”