Calder Foundation

Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan opens today at the Seattle Art Museum (@seattleartmuseum ). A Calder Prize winner in 2005, Donovan chose Calder’s Mountains (1:5 intermediate maquette) and Jacaranda as touchpoints for the exhibition. Like the vast majority of Calder’s sculptures, both works are black. Donovan explains: “My primary (though not sole) focus on the color black references Calder’s use of black in many of his works as a neutralizing force that flattens sculptural shapes.” The exhibition is on view through 17 January 2027.      Image: Installation views, Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan, Seattle Art Museum, 2026. Photographs by Scott Leen. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Tara Donovan   #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #SeattleArtMuseum

On this day in 1946, Calder inquired with gallerist Marian Willard whether she would be interested in having him make jewelry in gold. “I’d like to make some stuff in gold—but it makes a larger investment—shall we get into that racket?” While most of Calder’s jewelry is fashioned from humble industrial materials such as brass and steel wire, there are several works made in gold. Twelve of them—including the brooches pictured here—are on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (@fondationlv ), in Calder. Rêver enéquilibre. These brooches are among the many works Calder made for his wife, Louisa, as tokens of his devotion.     Images: Anniversary brooch (1956); Brooch (c. 1948); Brooch (1958); Medieval beastie brooch (1958), all gold and steel wire. Photographs 1 and 3 by @mariarobledo . © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York    #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #FondationLouisVuitton

With spring in full swing, it’s a great time to visit Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York (@stormkingarcenter ). The sculpture park is home to Calder’s stabile The Arch, which stands over fifty-six feet high. Calder’s process for making monumental sculptures began with the creation of a small-scale maquette. Using his intuitive conception of scale, the artist would then work with an industrial ironworks to fabricate his objects in colossal dimensions.     Image: The Arch (1975), Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York. Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York    #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #StormKingArtCenter

Calder. Rêver en équilibre is on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (@fondationlv ). “This interactive aspect of Calder’s work, which seems so simple, is the most compelling,” Emily LaBarge (@emilylabarge ) writes in The New York Times (@nytimes ). “We as viewers—and as humans in the world—have unavoidable relationships with everything around us. To coexist with something carefully and harmoniously balanced is magnificent. It demands a respect for life, whose potential, like the possible configurations of each mobile, is infinite.” The exhibition runs through 16 August.     Image: Installation view, Calder. Rêver en équilibre, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2026. Photograph by Marc Domage. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage    #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #FondationLouisVuitton

We were very sorry to learn of the recent passing of Doris Fisher, a philanthropist, art collector, and cofounder of Gap Inc. Doris and her husband, Don Fisher, collected Calder’s work in remarkable depth. In 2009, the couple partnered with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (@sfmoma ) to share their extraordinary collection—including the standing mobile Moths II—with the public. “Over the past two decades, Doris and Donald Fisher have distinguished themselves from average Calder collectors,” Alexander S. C. Rower wrote in 2007. “They have amassed a succinct overview of my grandfather’s career, modulated by superb mobiles, a gong, a tower, and outdoor sculptures. Their collection captures the dynamic energy within his early figurative works through the monumental possibilities of his intimate maquettes.” A dedicated gallery of the Fishers’ Calder collection is currently on view at SFMOMA.   Image: Moths II (1947), sheet metal, rod, wire, and paint. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York   #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation

Max Hollein (@maxhollein ), Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (@metmuseum ), and his wife, fashion designer Nina Hollein (@ninahollein ), both wore Calder jewelry to last night’s Met Gala. “For Calder, sculpture, design, and fashion did not so much collide but joined harmoniously in the making of his unique form of jewelry,” writes Jane Adlin. “The genius of Alexander Calder is that there are vast inferences, beautifully nuanced in every piece of his jewelry, yet the work defies classification, evoking a personal response from everyone who sees it.”   Image: Max and Nina Hollein wearing Calder jewelry, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2026. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York   #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #MetGala

We’ve reached the final work in our 50 works countdown—Alexander Calder’s Three Quintains (Hello Girls) ↑ This notable piece of LACMA’s history is once again on view—see the three, dynamic standing mobiles as they move, responding to both wind and water that arcs from the jets of the reflecting pool.

As visitors descend the Cuboid stairwell at Calder Gardens (@caldergardens ), the hanging mobile Tentacles reveals itself through an opening in the wall. This sculpture comprises a series of dynamic wires, each one hooked onto the next, spiraling through its motion. A tiny sphere affixed to one of the wires occasionally collides with a curved element, emitting a sound that is audible to anyone who happens to be standing nearby at just the right moment. “On a landing where the steps shift at a right angle is a glass-fronted inset—called the Art Nook—within which lurks one of the installation’s most arresting pieces: Calder’s mobile Tentacles,” writes Martin Filler in the New York Review of Books (@nybooks ). “This attenuated white-painted sheet metal and wire construction floats mysteriously in its black-painted niche ... one hopes that this unimprovable conjunction of hypnotic artwork and inventive display will be retained in perpetuity.”     Image: Tentacles (1947), Calder Gardens, 2025. Photograph by Iwan Baan. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York     #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #CalderGardens

Alexandre Calder: Volumes–Vecteurs–Densités / Dessins–Portraits—the first exhibition of Calder’s abstract works—opened on this day in 1931 at Galerie Percier, Paris. Fernand Léger contributed an introduction to the exhibition’s catalogue:   “Eric Satie illustrated by  CALDER  Why not?  ‘It’s serious without seeming to be.’  Neoplastician from the start, he believed in the absolute of two colored rectangles. . . .  His need for fantasy broke the connection; he started to ‘play’ with his materials: wood, plaster, iron, wire, especially iron wire. . . .a time both picturesque and spirited. . . .  . . . .A reaction; the wire stretches, becomes rigid, geometrical—pure plastic—it is the present era—an anti-Romantic impulse dominated by the problem of equilibrium.  Looking at these new works—transparent, objective, exact—I think of Satie, Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi, Arp—those unchallenged masters of unexpressed and silent beauty. Calder is of the same line.  He is 100% American.  Satie and Duchamp are 100% French.  And yet, we meet?”    Five of the works presented at Galerie Percier are on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton (@fondationlv ) in Calder. Rêver en équilibre.    Images: Sphérique I (1930), wire, brass, wood, and paint; Arc V (c. 1930), wood, steel wire, and paint; Croisière (1931), wire, wood, and paint; Installation image, Alexandre Calder: Volumes–Vecteurs–Densités / Dessins–Portraits, Galerie Percier, Paris, 1931. Photograph by Marc Vaux. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Georges Pompidou, Marc Vaux Collection    #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation

We are delighted to announce Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan, an exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum (@seattleartmuseum ) pairing the legendary American modernist with one of the most exciting sculptors working today. A Calder Prize winner in 2005, Donovan chose Calder’s Jacaranda and Mountains (1:5 intermediate maquette) as touchpoints for the show. Like the vast majority of Calder’s sculptures, both works are black. Donovan explains, “My primary (though not sole) focus on the color black references Calder’s use of black in many of his works as a neutralizing force that flattens sculpture shapes.” The exhibition opens 13 May and will be on view through 17 January 2027.      Images: Jacaranda (1949), sheet metal, wire, and paint; Tara Donovan, Untitled (Mylar) (detail) (2011/2013), mylar and hot glue. Photography by Mick Vecenz, courtesy of Arp Museum Banhof Rolandseck. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Tara Donovan   #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #SeattleArtMuseum #TaraDonovan

Jean Hélion was born on this day in 1904. Calder became close friends with the French painter during his early years in avant-garde Paris, where they often exhibited with the same groups. “One of the very few artists Calder met around that time who could match his own discipline, drive, and esprit was the dazzlingly bright, gifted, and ambitious Jean Hélion,” writes Jed Perl. “Six years Calder’s junior, Hélion [had] … the kind of easygoing and unpretentious manners that were a breath of fresh air after the affectations of much of the Parisian avant-garde.” Calder gifted this 1933 hanging mobile to Hélion in exchange for a painting made the same year by the French artist. Both works are on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (@fondationLV ), in Calder. Rêver en équilibre.    Images: Calder, Untitled (1933), wire, wood, and paint; Hélion, Untitled (1933), oil on canvas. Photograph by Marc Domage. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage   #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #JeanHélion #FondationLouisVuitton

Calder. Rêver en équilibre opens today at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (@fondationlv ). Organized in collaboration with the Calder Foundation, this retrospective—featuring nearly 300 works spanning the artist’s entire career—celebrates the centenary of Calder’s arrival in France. Set within Frank Gehry’s iconic architecture, Calder. Rêver en équilibre covers half a century of creation, from the mid-1920s and the first staging of the artist’s Cirque Calder performances to the monumental sculptures that redefined public art in the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition will be on view through 16 August 2026.    Images: Installation views, Calder. Rêver en équilibre, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2026. Photographs by Marc Domage. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage   #Calder #AlexanderCalder #CalderFoundation #FondationLouisVuitton