Calder Gardens, a new space in which to experience the works of Alexander Calder, is scheduled to open on 21 September in the artist’s hometown of Philadelphia. The $70m project comprises a building complex with a series of subterranean galleries and open-air pavilions surrounded by panoramic gardens. It is a “sacred place” where visitors can “engage with Calder’s work in a way that has not been possible before”, says Alexander S. C. Rower, the president of the Calder Foundation and the artist’s grandson. “This is a place to simply be present without the oppressive atmosphere and strict rules of the typical museum experience.”
The new site is located on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, across from the Rodin Museum and the Barnes Foundation, along an axis of works of art by three generations of Calders. To the south-east, there is a 19th-century statue of William Penn by the artist’s grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder. In the middle at Logan Square, his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, created the Swann Memorial Fountain (1924). And to the north-west, Calder’s mobile The Ghost (1964) hangs in the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Calder was born in 1898 in Philadelphia and began his career in the 1920s making three-dimensional wire sculptures. He is credited with inventing the mobile, a suspended abstract sculpture that slowly moves in space. From the 1950s onwards, Calder increasingly used bolted steel plates to create large-scale outdoor sculptures, which are now found throughout the world.
But Calder Gardens does not offer much didactic information on the artist. The site aims to create a more mindful experience that is framed by its art, architecture and environment. There are no wall labels, and the works on view will be periodically rotated by the Calder Foundation with art from its collection and loans from institutions such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, including rarely and never-exhibited pieces.
“We want people to have a direct connection to the art without intervention, since this isn’t an exhibition or a linear presentation,” Rower says. “The old idea is that a museum goes out into the world, collects objects, drags them home and presents them in a hermetically sealed glass box. We want to move beyond that.”
Plans for a Philadelphia institution devoted to Calder began in the mid-2000s, but they fell through as a result of disagreements in the negotiation process. The project was reignited around 2020, when Rower began conversations with Joseph Neubauer, a local philanthropist who encouraged funding a standalone Calder site in the artist’s hometown.
“The fact that a similar project didn’t succeed many years ago presented an additional challenge, which I actually welcomed,” Neubauer says. “This will likely be my last project, and it felt like the right thing to do with the right artist in the right place. It completes the Parkway in Philadelphia.”
Calder Gardens is administered by the Barnes Foundation with support from the Calder Foundation, the City of Philadelphia, the State of Pennsylvania and a board of trustees that includes several area philanthropists. The unique operating model will “help minimise overhead costs”, which “non-profits spend time and resources managing that could be consolidated elsewhere”, Neubauer says.
A sense of surprise
The Pritzker Prize-winning firm Herzog & de Meuron was enlisted to design a building that could serve as a flexible space for Calder’s art. The architect Jacques Herzog cycled through several proposals before the design came into focus as a three-level, 18,000 sq. ft structure carved into the ground—with around 13,000 sq. ft below street level. The above-ground portion leads to two subterranean galleries displaying Calder’s sculptures and paintings.
“It was not my goal to translate the essence and philosophy of Calder’s work into an architectural experience,” Herzog says. “I tried to avoid analogies. Calder’s work stands for itself, and our architecture stands for itself—it offers an experience in itself for all visitors. My strongest endeavour is to create an unseen diversity of spaces and atmospheres for Calder’s objects, so they can be perceived in new and unexpected ways.”
The building is surrounded by a garden by Piet Oudolf, the Dutch garden and landscape designer who previously spearheaded landmark public projects like the High Line in New York City and Lurie Garden in Chicago. The new Calder institution’s garden seamlessly interweaves the architecture and the artist’s sculptures with around 250 species of native perennial plants and trees. It will take around a year for some parts of the garden to fully mature.
“The design process was very abstract, because what we want to do is create a sense of surprise,” Oudolf says. “You can go there and come back a few days later, and the garden will be different. The garden is an experience in time and through the seasons, while the art remains mostly static. The building and the artworks are embraced by the garden, which is quite unique.”
The garden features three zones: a meadow-like environment, a space filled with grouped and hanging plants, and a transitional space on the basement level with cascading flora.
As for public programming, Juana Berrío (Calder Gardens’ senior director of programmes) has devised an extensive roster of offerings that emphasise sound, movement, mindfulness and pause. She says she aims to support artists whose practices are “more spiritual in nature” and will “amplify Indigenous and non-Western perspectives”.
In addition, Calder Gardens plans to host “silent days”, when visitors are encouraged to turn off their phones and engage in walking or seated meditations, conversations reflecting the collaborative spirit of Calder’s own practice, and seasonal listening circles with Lenape tribal members. Visitors will also be able to participate in a commissioned series of “audio walks”, in which artists and poets connect elements of the space to personal anecdotes, memories and reflections.
“We want to prioritise storytelling over scholarship, because that allows Calder’s legacy to expand—not just through a historical lens but through the present-day voices responding to the spirit and intentions of his work, which is rooted in introspection and contemplation,” Berrío says. “Calder deeply understood the interconnectedness of all things. That’s something we want to celebrate here.”
