The Calder Gardens, a Philadelphia space for art by Alexander Calder, has finally offered a look inside the project, which is set to open in 2024.
Designed by the architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the Calder Gardens will be located within walking distance of the Barnes Foundation, near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It’s set to be part of the Parkway Gardens, and it will house sculptures by the modernist artist, some of which will be shown in outdoor settings.
But do not call it an institution, at least in the traditional sense. Alexander S. C. Rower, president of the Calder Foundation and the artist’s grandson, said in a phone interview, “We’re not making a museum, we’re making a place for introspection.”
Jacques Herzog, a partner of Herzog & de Meuron, said in an email that the Calder Gardens are “a spatial sequence rather than a classical gallery. A world that unfolds as you walk into the door.”
Those spaces contain views of the surrounding gardens and the Philadelphia cityscape, and are expected to provide visitors with new ways of seeing Calder’s sculptures that can’t be obtained in a white-cube setting. It’s been envisioned as a tribute to the unusual nature of Calder’s abstract sculptures and mobiles, which shift dramatically depending on where and how one sees them.
Spanning 18,000 square feet, the Calder Gardens will likely host particularly sizable pieces, both indoors, where ceilings rise to 16 feet high, and outdoors. The works on view, which will primarily be loans from museums and other collections, are expected to rotate over the years, and a checklist for the initial presentation has not yet been solidified, Rower said.
Talk of a Calder art space in Philadelphia dates all the way back to 2001, when a $5 million museum was first announced. In 2009, however, sculptures that were set to be on view there were removed. The museum was never realized.
In 2020, however, plans for a permanent Calder space were revived, and Herzog & de Meuron, which has previously designed art institutions such as the Parrish Art Museum, the de Young Museum, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, was named as its architect. The project’s cost has been pegged at $70 million.
Below, a look at some of the newly unveiled designs for the Calder Gardens.
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Image Credit: ©Herzog & de Meuron/All artworks by Alexander Calder ©2022 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York “Calder’s work should be shown in an unprecedented way avoiding the usual approach with an iconic architectural object,” Herzog said. “That is how we developed the concept with a barn and gardens covering a whole sequence of unlikely underground spaces.”
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Image Credit: ©Herzog & de Meuron/All artworks by Alexander Calder ©2022 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Unlike traditional museums, which are often not built with specific artworks in mind, the Calder Gardens were designed specially for Calder’s art. “It’s works by Calder installed in a purpose-built space, meaning that the space is built for Calder’s vocabulary and making his works sing in it,” Rower said.
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Image Credit: ©Herzog & de Meuron/All artworks by Alexander Calder ©2022 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Outdoor spaces will allow Calder’s work to be exposed to the elements, which could in theory cause the art to look dramatically different, depending on the weather and time of day.
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Image Credit: ©Herzog & de Meuron/All artworks by Alexander Calder ©2022 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Calder had some Philadelphia connections, having spent a brief part of his childhood there, but Rower said that the Calder Gardens won’t take up his grandfather’s biography as a traditional museum might. “We’re not curating exhibitions—it’s a pure aesthetic experience that gives you a chance to be with the art,” Rower said.
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Image Credit: ©Herzog & de Meuron/All artworks by Alexander Calder ©2022 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Initially, the Calder Foundation had proposed the project to Herzog as a meditative space for art à la the Rothko Chapel in Houston. “Doesn’t Art always ask for that, for a space that provokes or encourages your thinking, your looking?” Herzog asked. “A place where your perception and awareness would be sharpened and animated?”