Calder Gardens will open to the Public on September 21, 2025

In conjunction with the announcement, the institution has unveiled its new visual identity and website—caldergardens.org. This marks another step toward the inauguration of the widely anticipated cultural destination dedicated to cultivating reflection, curiosity, and human connection through the art of Alexander Calder, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and a native Philadelphian.

Centering Calder’s passion for experimentation, interdisciplinary collaborations, cross-media practices, real-time experience, and embrace of impermanence, Calder Gardens will be a place for art, culture, environmental awareness, and introspection. Its site, featuring a building designed by Pritzker Prize winning design practice Herzog & de Meuron and landscape of native and flowering species designed by Piet Oudolf, will present a rotating selection of masterworks curated by the Calder Foundation, New York.

An active series of ongoing and recurring programs will make Calder Gardens an ever-evolving ecosystem of ideas, sounds, stories, and communities. Including concerts, lectures, screenings, performances, readings, mindfulness practices, and other wide- ranging activities, this slate will encourage elevating experiences for mind, body, and spirit.

Philadelphia philanthropists working in collaboration with the Calder Foundation founded a 501(c)3 non-profit supporting organization to launch Calder Gardens, with significant support from the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Through an innovative collaboration, the Barnes Foundation will provide administrative, operational, and educational programming support to Calder Gardens in what constitutes a new model for institutional sustainability and efficiency.

Alexander Calder (b. 1898, Lawnton, Pennsylvania–d. 1976, New York City), whose illustrious career spanned much of the 20th century, is the most acclaimed and influential sculptor of our time. Born into a family of celebrated though more classically trained artists, Calder utilized his innovative genius to profoundly change the course of modern art. He began in the 1920s by developing a new method of sculpting: by bending and twisting wire, he essentially “drew” three-dimensional figures in space. He is renowned for the invention of the mobile, whose suspended, abstract elements move and balance in changing harmony. From the 1950s onward, Calder increasingly devoted himself to making outdoor sculpture on a grand scale from bolted steel plate. Today, these stately titans grace public plazas in cities throughout the world.