Sculpture needs a new home.

A mammoth teal blue sculpture that has been suspended from the 32nd floor of a Midtown building for 15 years needs a new home, preferably another Art Deco building with an appropriate corner setback.

The artwork was placed on the landmarked former McGraw Hill Building in 1981 as a three-year temporary installation, but the new building owner no longer wants the responsibility of maintaining and displaying the flying wing.

When Bruce Kafenbaum was exploring the restoration of the facade on his new property at 330 West 42nd Street, he realized the special permit for the huge artwork created by Owen Morrel had expired long ago and the piece needed to be taken down.

Three years ago, in fact, Landmarks had an engineer look at the piece, who determined the structural supports had deteriorated and it needed painting.

It would cost about $50,000 to put up scaffolding just to get to the piece, and another $40,000 to fix it, determined the engineer, a number that Morrel now guesstimates would be closer to $30,000.

So the "Boomerang," as the sculpture is called, was just kind of left hanging in midair, dangling over the southeast side of the building at 41st Street.

The Boomerang is no mere toy. It is a huge metal wing-like structure with Eiffel Tower-like supports that weighs several tons and runs at least 30 feet in four directions.

Since Kafenbaum is preparing to pay for and erect the scaffolding anyway for the $4 million facade restoration of the property, he realized it would be the perfect time for the artist to retrieve his piece.

Kafenbaum was even willing to have his workers take the Boomerang down, afraid that if the hulk or the plastic reflective material screwed onto the wing part ever fell, it "would not act like a boomerang" and come back up, but instead fly down on the passers-by below.

As the building is next door to the busy Port Authority Bus Terminal, Kafenbaum believes it is likely the boomerang wouldn't just hit the sidewalk, but a somebody or three.

But when he called Morrel, the artist didn't take the news lightly and began complaining that the artwork he created expressly for the space couldn't just go anywhere else.

"It's site specific," he told REW, explaining he received money to build the Boomerang from the National Endowment for the Arts, other public monies, and even, he says, money from Jeffrey and Aaron Gural - former operators of the building - who granted permission for the artwork to be installed on a temporary basis.

The Boomerang gave the building a boost, said Morrel. "That building has gotten millions of dollars in kind in publicity," he insisted, wondering why someone wouldn't leave it up.

He said people from all over the world used to come to visit the sculpture. But eventually, he said, "The traffic was enormous and it was becoming a problem, so they shut it down and didn't let people go on it," locking the door to the setback where the sculpture is located.

Not quite, said Kafenbaum, who says it's Morrel who got the publicity for the sculpture and is looking for it now as well. The only people who ever call now and ask to see the sculpture are photographers who want to shoot fashion models nearby, added Kafenbaum.

Morrel did say he has "gotten a lot of work as a by-product" of having created the Boomerang. He is more well-known in Europe, but in New York, where he lives, his also created a green mirrored sculpture that sits in the traffic island that lies in front of the Flatiron Building.

The installation at the McGraw Hill Building was also quite an affair. After it was created in a studio in Buffalo, it was transported to the city, where a crane lifted the piece up.

"The sculpture is welded to the flange of an I-beam," said Morrel. "It had an indentation and it goes into the indent and then it is hermetically sealed in cement so there's no oxidation in the joint." While that joint should be X-rayed "by a non-partisan" engineer, he agreed that if the artwork were to stay up, the "temporary" plastic reflective coating on the boomerang section would need to be removed, and he would oversee the installation of a thin gauge stainless steel instead. The plastic, which is screwed down, could be in danger of literally flying away in a strong wind, Morrel agreed.

"They should come off rather quickly," he said of the panels. "If there is a vulnerability, it is there." Adding, "It hasn't happened to date."

While Morrel claims the sculpture "doesn't hang out over the edge of the building," it comes mighty close and certainly, in a stiff wind. it is not unlikely that if loose, the entire sculpture could bounce its way over the parapet. "A piece of it could, but only if not in repair," admitted Morrel, who said he never was shown the Landmarks engineer's report.

That kind of talk scares Kafenbaum, who concedes if he weren't worried about the liability from a falling piece he wouldn't really mind if Morrel repaired it and left it up.

"I'm not ready to take on that continuing responsibility," he explained.

And since Kafenbaum feels he doesn't own the art, he also doesn't want to be responsible for it once he takes it down. And then where does he put it? In pieces in a dumpster?

"The question is, who owns it and whose responsible," said Kafenbaum, even though he agrees "the Boomerang is not in danger of falling off tomorrow."

So if you're a patron of the arts or desire some hoopla for your building from a high - flying Boomerang, talk to Kafenbaum. His scaffolding goes up this spring and hopefully, he says, "the Boomerang comes down."