PHILADELPHIA — It’s “not a museum,” and, according to its architects, it’s “not a building.” But this cool subterranean lair on the historic Benjamin Franklin Parkway now houses a shifting collection of floating mobiles and grand “stabiles” by the modernist master Alexander Calder.
Welcome to Calder Gardens. In stark contrast to the soaring staircase of the recently rebranded Philadelphia Art Museum, the newest addition to Philadelphia’s “Museum Mile” is a gentle slice into the earth. Over a decade of planning and $100 million brought Calder’s classic sculptures together with architects Herzog & de Meuron, who worked on Sotheby’s recently unveiled Breuer Building home, and Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf. Set back from pathways that wind through 37,000 perennial flower buds and saplings, a structure is sheathed in a giant mirror that bounces the light from the parkway back to the public. But do Philadelphians see themselves in the reflection?
On the left, Alexander Calder’s “Black Widow” (1969)
Once inside and past the ticket desk, visitors are beckoned down a large set of stairs into the first of many delightful architectural riddles. Long benches are arranged like a stadium, but a blank wall blocks your view. A promise of open space invites you down a few more steps. You’re rewarded with a vista into the first gaping hall, a delicate mobile suspended overhead and an arching “stabile” reaching up underneath. To see them up close, you must descend into a pitch-black, floor-lit tunnel that may have inspired WHYY reporter Peter Crimmins to call it an architectural “haunted house.” At the bottom, the space opens up again into a grand underground complex of sloping walls and smooth concrete, the curves and corners of which quietly gesture to Calder’s work.
Meaning can be slippery in a place like this. So can history: There are no wall labels here.“We wanted this to be different,” Sandy Rower, the president of the Calder Foundation and the artist’s grandson, told WHYY. “We really wanted this to be more of a sacred experience, a personal experience instead of using your head.” The statements seem to echo Calder’s own vision of his work. “This has no utility and no meaning,” he once said of one of his kinetic sculptures. “It is simply beautiful.”
Once inside and past the ticket desk, visitors are beckoned down a large set of stairs.
Director of Programming Juana Berrío, who arranged for a joyous parade replete with classically Philadelphian performing acts on the opening day of the space, told Hyperallergic that Calder Gardens “is not a place where you go to be taught something.” Rather, they are “honoring his legacy” by inviting visitors “to be connected to the present moment, to notice how things are constantly changing, to notice how we, ourselves, are changing.”
“We want people to feel curious,” Berrío said.
Mike Cool, a local Philly artist who was visiting the museum one fall afternoon, said the space felt like “an underground oasis.”
“For me, being a Black man in Philly, art is very subjective and perspective-driven. And when I see this, it makes me think about how the city has just so many layered connections,” he told Hyperallergic. “It puts me in a good space to think about the things that I’ve seen daily that I might have been overlooking.”
Alexander Calder’s “Untitled” (c.1952) and “Jerusalem Stabile II” (1976)
Not everyone is as impressed. Google reviews are currently a mixed bag, with some saying they were disappointed by the small amount of work on view, and had expected to see more than 30ish pieces for an $18 ticket. (Admission is $16 for seniors, $5 for students and youth, and free for children under 12.) Others public comments expressed frustration with what appeared as a bait-and-switch: The institution refuses to call itself a “museum,” but it functions as one — ticket price and all. On Instagram, many commented with excitement (👏 and 🔥 emojis abound), while others expressed annoyance at the lack of wall labels. In since-deleted comments and comments on retired advertisement posts, users criticized what they saw as an “elitist” air around the space.
A view of Calder Gardens’s mirrored structure
The consensus from critics has been similarly divided. Amid scores of rave reviews, Michael J. Lewis at the Washington Post wrote that the Gardens “turns its back on its Parkway context with a self-satisfied aloofness.” Nestled in the corner of one towering corridor, there is one mauve-colored alcove that houses sculptures and paintings by Calder’s family of artists, including a model by his grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, known for his famed sculpture of Ben Franklin that tops Philadelphia’s City Hall. Perhaps the fact that the tribute to this art dynasty is so tucked away contributes to the Calder showcase feeling so disconnected from the city.
A visitor looks at Alexander Calder’s “21 feuilles blanches” (1953) on the left and and “Sword Plant” (1947) on the right.
Calder Gardens opened at an uneasy time for Philadelphia’s legacy cultural institutions. Controversy exploded over the Philadelphia Art Museum’s rebrand, and intrigue is brewing over the sudden dismissal of CEO and Executive Director Sasha Suda and her swift replacement with former Metropolitan of Art CEO and president Daniel Weiss. Meanwhile, the Academy of Natural Sciences has closed its doors to the public on all weekdays, and artwork by students is only now being “salvaged” by former students of the dramatically shuttered University of the Arts.
In this moment where the future of arts seems so unsteady, is the Calder Gardens model what Philadelphians long for? Even with promises of exciting programming ahead (including commissions from artists Raven Chacon and Cecilia Vicuña), for $18, does this beautiful yet austere space offer the chance to reflect on whatever matters most to its visitors, locals included? Or does it only allow us to disconnect, lose ourselves, and, perhaps, forget where we are?
Alexander Calder, “Untitled” (1946) hangs behind “Polygons on Triangles” (1963).Alexander Calder, “Eucalyptus” (1940)
