Police fear that a $3000 piece of sculpture destined for the Radcliffe alumnae art exhibit may have been thrown out by thieves unaware of its value.

The sculpture--a work of American sculptress Marie-Zoe Greene-Mercier '33--was stolen on May 12 from a car parked on Washington St. in Boston. The car belonged to Martha Alinda, a friend of the artist, who had driven the art work from New York for exhibition in the annual Radcliffe alumnae art show.

Looking down from a hotel window, a companion of Alinda's saw a man get out of a red Plymouth and open the trunk of Alinda's Toyota, but the thief had disappeared with a box containing the two-foot-high sculpture and a typewriter before Alinda reached her car.

Boston Police Detective David Campbell said yesterday that the thieves were probably more interested in the typewriter than the sculpture. He added that the $3000 arrangement of stainless-steel cubes "might be in a garbage pail or destroyed by now."

"The kind of people in the combat zone [the Washington St. area] are not exactly he artistic type," Campbell said. "If they kept it, they probably don't know what they have."

Campbell said the police have no further clues about the identity of the thief or the whereabouts of the sculpture. He said a cursory search of nearby garbage pails turned up nothing.