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Calder sculpture garden goes fallow

A corner of Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Parkway lost all of its Alexander Calders this week. For more than four years, sculptures by the inventor of the mobile adorned the grassy, tree-dotted Calder Garden bordering 22d Street - a two-acre plot once eyed for a Calder museum.

Eric McDade with Crozier Fine Arts helps remove the Alexander Calder sculpture "Three Discs, One Lacking (1968)," from it's place at 22nd and the Parkway on Wednesday.   (Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer)
Eric McDade with Crozier Fine Arts helps remove the Alexander Calder sculpture "Three Discs, One Lacking (1968)," from it's place at 22nd and the Parkway on Wednesday. (Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer)Read more

A corner of Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Parkway lost all of its Alexander Calders this week.

For more than four years, sculptures by the inventor of the mobile adorned the grassy, tree-dotted Calder Garden bordering 22d Street - a two-acre plot once eyed for a Calder museum.

A few years ago, 11 works - 10 stationary ones called stabiles and a hybrid with a movable top - were scattered there.

As of Sunday, seven remained, including the bright-orange Jerusalem Stabile.

Yesterday morning, the last piece was carted away, and the Calder Garden was no more.

The plot will now be just a park maintained by the city.

The sculpture garden's funding by the Pew Charitable Trusts, announced as $5 million in 2001, simply expired, officials explained.

"No one ended the arrangement," said Aviva Kievsky, a spokeswoman for the mayor's office. "It was just an eight-year term that ran itself out."

Well before lunchtime yesterday, near two rakes lay the newly uprooted signs for Angulaire, The Rocket, Funghi Neri (Black Mushrooms), Untitled and Discontinuous, as well as Jerusalem Stabile.

"They ain't coming back," said guard Clarence Cottman, 45, one of a security crew based around the clock at the site's closet-size guardhouse.

Those six artworks were returned to the New York-based Calder Foundation.

"That is an absolute sin, because the Parkway is an institution for artwork in Philadelphia," said area resident Chris Quinn, 48, out walking his dog.

"I liked what was here a lot," he said.

The seventh - Three Discs, One Lacking, the only one owned by the city - was reinstalled at Triangle Park, near 17th and the Parkway.

Not only will the guardhouse go, but so will the lights and security cameras, said Cottman, who expects to be reassigned by his security firm.

Before the Calders came, homeless men and women camped there at night, said HughE Dillon, who watched Jerusalem Stabile being dismantled Tuesday and broke the news on PhillyChitChat.com.

"It's definitely going to be unsafe at night if they leave the benches and there's no electricity for the lights," said the paparazzo/paralegal, 45, who lives near the Art Museum. "It's going to be an eyesore."

"It's going to come back to a tent city," guard Cottman predicted.

The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art issued a statement late yesterday afternoon on the Calder sculptures: "The project has concluded after a successful display of sculptures over the last eight years. However, we are delighted that the city-owned Calder sculpture, Three Discs, One Lacking, will remain at a nearby location along the Parkway, providing a further reminder of the significance of the Calder family of sculptors both for the Parkway and the city itself."

Yesterday morning, as workers removed signs and a backhoe cracked a concrete base, a man lay sprawled on one of the half-dozen wood-slatted benches, a stuffed trash bag close by.

A sign near the sidewalk now had less reason to remain.

Headlined "Calder Garden," it explained:

"Through the generous support of the Pew Charitable Trusts, and through a collaboration between the Calder Foundation, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the City of Philadelphia, and the Fairmount Park Commission, a series of outdoor installations of sculpture by Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is taking place along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway."

As the sign ironically points out, "The work of three generations of Calders can be seen in dramatic succession on the Parkway" - from Alexander "Sandy" Calder's Ghost mobile over the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Great Stair Hall to father Alexander Stirling Calder's Swann Memorial Fountain at Logan Square to grandfather Alexander Milne Calder's many sculptures gracing City Hall, including the statue of William Penn.

Dreams of a Calder museum took flight in 1999, when a 40-foot red stabile called Eagle was perched outside the Art Museum.

In May 2002, 19-foot-tall Ordinary, featuring a colorful mobile suspended from its top, marked the proposed site, across the Parkway from the Rodin Museum.

In November 2004, 10 more works, including Three Discs, One Lacking, were added, creating the Calder Garden.

The museum's prospects faded the next year amid uncertainties about funding and commitments of artworks from the Calder Foundation.

Across the street, east of the Rodin, dust keeps rising from a demolition project clearing the way for another museum - a relocated Barnes Foundation.