Brooklyn-based artist Duke Riley has launched a public search for the remains of a goat named Skellig Mór, a former mascot of the USS Vermont battleship in the early 1900s. His campaign involves missing posters, a newspaper ad in the Boston Globe, and a dedicated hotline, forming the centerpiece of his new solo exhibition, "The Repatriation of King Skellig Mór," at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Brookline, Massachusetts.
The project uses the forgotten history of the goat, which was taken from Ireland to the U.S. and later donated to the Navy, to explore themes of repatriation, remembrance, and the human impact on the natural world. Riley's exhibition features contemporary scrimshaw art, including a piece drawn on a recovered detergent bottle, to memorialize Skellig Mór and question the ethics of human and animal service, framing the search as a symbolic act of cultural return.