The two electronic walkers that have been mounted to the steps of Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan have been walking for nearly five months without a proper permit from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The landmarks commission issued a permit in 2004 to the Public Art Fund to keep the high-tech walkers that expired in October of 2005, a spokeswoman for the commission, Diane Jackier, said via e-mail last night.

The walkers, which were part of a nine-part exhibit, “Julian Opie: Animals, Buildings, Cars, and People,” were originally supposed to come down in October. The removal was delayed twice and the fund is now scheduled to dismantle them tomorrow.

The communication director for Public Art Fund, Anne Wehr, said operating with an expired permit after the exhibit was extended was an over sight by the organization. She said, however, that the nonprofit did get approval from the city’s Department of Education, which is housed in the Tweed Courthouse.

“It certainly wasn’t a case where we just left it sitting there and didn’t bother telling anybody what we were going to do,” Ms. Wehr told The New York Sun last night.

She added: “What we are doing is trying to bring exciting public art to the city’s public spaces.” That is an effort that has strong backing from Mayor Bloomberg and his administration, which were instrumental in getting the exhibit up.

The Public Art Fund decided to keep “Bruce Walking” and “Sara Walking” while Mr. Opie, the artist who created them, finalized arrangements for his next exhibition. The artworks have been popular, and the fund has been deciding what to replace them with, Ms. Wehr said.

It was unclear last night whether the Public Art Fund would be subject to fines for violating its permit.

In a move that might upset some of fans of the two blinking walkers, the panels are being split up.

One will be sent to the Aldridge Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where it will be reprogrammed into an electronic dancer. The other will go back to Mr. Opie, who is based in London.

Several other pieces in Mr. Opie’s exhibit, including a cluster of wooden farm animals, were shipped to Indianapolis for a public art show there.

A grouping of six white fluffy sheep (actually painted metal panels fixed into the ground) were sold to a private collector in Mexico, Mr. Opie said yesterday during an interview from his studio in London.

He said that exhibit was a great one for him. As for the electronic walkers, the artist said: “I think there was a hope that they might stay up forever.”

Ms. Wehr said that though the nonprofit “wanted to keep them up as long as possible” that the organization’s focus is on temporary exhibitions. She said the fund would be installing a new exhibit in the area soon.

Tweed Courthouse is a landmark building that was completed in 1881 and designed by two of the city’s prominent 19th-century architects, John Kellum and Leopold Eidlitz. A $90 million renovation was completed shortly before the Department of Education moved in in 2002.