Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race
2026 Race Report: Mooseum Heist

Mooseum Heist presents a crafty bovine sneaking into mooseums to steal precious paintings and jewelry. Members of the team are from Sparks, Nevada; Arlington, Virginia; and Somerville, Massachusetts.

For the well-executed kinetic absurdity of cow art thieves, they won 2026 Fantasy & Folly award exhibiting the theme of this year’s race.

They also won one of four 2026 ACE Awards for successfully completing the race at a significantly higher level of ACE competition, committing to several key additional rules including:

• No changing pilots
• No pushing or pulling the sculpture
• All components of the sculpture used at any point during the race (such as mud tires or water pontoons) must be on the sculpture throughout the race

Racing on cobblestones is harder than it looks.

Their inflatable pontoons attached to the frame with special mounting brackets. If you want your sculpture to have removable pontoons, you still have to carefully design the frame and pontoon structures together.

On water Mooseum Heist was highly maneuverable with plenty of propulsion.

There was traffic congestion at the pier, so Mooseum did donuts while waiting.

Sand posed no impediment to Mooseum Heist.

They also got straight through the mud without assistance, very ACE-worthy.

The Baltimore crowd called out “Moooooooooo” whenever Mooseum Heist was around.

The team painted the Moona Lisa and Moo Nude. The pontoon holders are sand-cast from melted aluminum cans. Every part of the machine was recycled from scrap or other prior projects.

Across the finish line.

Here’s the mirrored Fantasy & Folly trophy.

The team sewed their brown & white Guernsey inflatable cow. Don’t miss the bandito mask.

2026 is the first time this team has come to Baltimore, but they’ve raced elsewhere, including:

• 2025 Lowell: Moo-Haul (ACE Champion)