Even if you’ve never heard of Alexander Calder (1898-1976), you probably know his work. Perhaps you’ve seen the celebrated American sculptor’s swooping, lipstick-red and 38-foot tall “Eagle” (1971) at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park, or some of his other primary-colored, curvilinear public sculptures scattered across the world. Maybe you’ve encountered one of his famed hanging mobiles, delicate and lithe constellations that branch out into space and move with the wind.
A tender new show at the Seattle Art Museum will delight and surprise Calder newbies and connoisseurs alike. Titled “Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection” (through Aug. 4, 2024), the exhibit showcases and celebrates the recent bequest — a promised gift — of more than 40 Calder artworks to the museum by Seattle philanthropists Jon Shirley and Kim Richter Shirley.
Consisting of mobiles, standing works, paintings, illustrations and works on paper, the collection — amassed over 35 years by Jon Shirley, a former Microsoft president, with his first wife, Mary (who died in 2013), and later with his second wife, Kim — is one of the most significant Calder collections in private hands, estimated to be worth around $200 million.
The collection contains many prime examples of Calder’s evolution over the years and a great deal of these artworks haven’t been shown for years. For Seattleites, this show presents a unique opportunity to see these artworks together for the first time.
For an artist famed for ethereal and fun-colored work, the introduction to the exhibit is surprisingly heavy and dark: A 10-foot-plus sculpture titled “Mountains” (1976) — a series of sharp, ink-black sheet-metal peaks — is the first thing visitors see. Nearby, a squat wooden figure, which Calder made in 1929 in a more figurative style, sits in a glass box.
The rather somber introduction represents the unexpected breadth of Calder’s work but also heightens the feeling of surprise when stepping into the next gallery, which is tall, airy and flooded with light. From above dangles a lanky, 11-foot-long mobile the artist created in the late ’60s as part of a stage set for a ballet. Each wire branch — ending in sheet-metal trapezoid and triangular petals painted primary blue, yellow, red and white — holds the next aloft, like dancers balancing on each other’s shoulders.
“This is one of the largest works in the show,” said José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s deputy director for art and this show’s curator, during a recent tour before the opening, his dark navy-blue outfit contrasting with the white walls and Calder’s bright colors. “You get a sense of theatricality.”
For years, the untitled sculpture (subtitled “Métaboles,” after the name of the ballet) hung in the entryway of the Shirley’s Medina home.
As we’re standing in SAM’s “double-height” gallery where it now hangs, a handful of installation workers are attaching the last labels to the wall, mopping the already-shiny wooden floors and installing a few more light fixtures with the help of a scissor lift. When throngs of visitors move through the show, which started Nov. 8, they’ll create air currents, stirring the mobiles to move in a slow ballet of weather vanes.
As Diaz puts it, Calder worked in the fourth dimension — time. The son of artists but trained as a mechanical engineer, Calder changed art history by making sculptures move, meaning his works take on different shapes depending on when the viewer sees the work, or how long they spend looking at it. It made him one of the most beloved, and some argue influential, artists of the past century.
SAM packs more than 40 works, spanning the range of Calder’s career, into three galleries. With some artworks up to 22 feet tall or 20 feet wide, “the exhibition was designed to make sure that everything would fit,” Diaz said. But the show never feels overcrowded thanks to the compelling exhibition design, which segments the galleries with white walls that curve into niches and create moments of respite. Many sculptures also hang above or stand on circular white platforms. These give the viewer ample close-up viewpoints and create podiums that amplify the reach of the mobiles, which are like visual whispers. An interplay of shadows cast on the white surroundings adds a layer of playfulness.
The size constraints mean this show doesn’t follow a chronological path: It doesn’t sketch Calder’s progression from figuration to abstraction during his years rubbing shoulders with the avant-garde in Paris, nor his later shift — after he finds mainstream success during and after World War II — from slender mobiles to monumental public sculptures. Rather, it blends it all together.
The exhibit, and the future donation of the collection itself, are a big deal for SAM: It puts the museum in the company of other national institutions by boosting its modern art holdings and making SAM one of two significant repositories for Calder’s work on the West Coast (along with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).
“It really enhances the reputation of SAM,” said Seattle-based museum consultant Susie Wilkening. The gift and the resulting exhibit, Wilkening noted, could also attract other donors, or potential future donors, to consider SAM a worthy beneficiary of capital or artwork. “They may want to say: ‘I want to be a part of that. I’m going to consider SAM, where maybe I wouldn’t have before,’” she said. “That can have a ripple effect.”
Given that Calder is a household name with broad appeal thanks to his playful style, this exhibit could also help bring more audiences into the museum, Wilkening noted. That’s particularly relevant given that audience levels have not rebounded at museums across the country, including SAM.
But the show is also designed to appeal to and surprise those who know Calder, Diaz said, through “Easter eggs” that show a different side of the famed sculptor: His use of found materials like wood and rocks, his whimsical early sketches of circus performers, as well as an extensive series of charming sculptures that could fit in the palm of your hand.
Standing near the vitrine displaying those miniature creations, Diaz pointed out the tiny screws holding these delicate brass wire and sheet metal pieces together. “Just because they’re small doesn’t mean that he had worked on them less,” Diaz said. “They’re quite complicated.”
Diaz walked over to a mobile hanging in the farthest corner, titled “Dispersed Objects with Brass Gong (1948).” “This is, for me, one of my favorites,” Diaz said. “Here, we go beyond just discs or panel shapes; they’ve got really fun curves. It almost makes me think of Matisse.” It’s also notable because it’s one of Calder’s lesser-known, sound-producing works. Diaz points to a red attachment dangling nearby. “If there was enough air current … it would actually strike the gong,” he said.
With these surprises, Diaz hopes to deepen our understanding of Calder. In doing so, SAM embarks on a balancing act of its own: Finding an equilibrium between appealing to a broad audience and challenging those who want to delve deep. It’s also a high-wire act to create a compelling narrative from a show that essentially came as-is, curated by private collectors — even if they were rigorous and scholarly in their approach — and without dialogue with other artists’ work. (Which, it should be noted, will be part of a robust slate of future Calder programming the Shirleys have funded.)
Diaz and SAM pull it off, in large part because Calder’s work remains so fresh and mesmerizing nearly half a century after his death. And the curators give the artwork room to breathe. These days, so many institutions find themselves competing with the tumult on our screens or with immersive “museums” where visitors take selfies in front of LED walls. Here, nothing shouts. You can take these sculptures in all at once, but consider taking your time to follow the minuscule movement of a small perforated disc or a wispy metal petal as they react to the movements of our bodies in space. Your patience will be rewarded.
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This coverage is partially underwritten by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over this and all its coverage.
