Press Release - Monumental Alexander Calder Sculpture to Welcome Visitors to The Huntington

Huntington also acquires Calder’s Bicentennial Tapestries, as well as works by Los Angeles artists Doyle Lane and Millard Sheets for new Education and Visitor Center, which opens April 4.

SAN MARINO, Calif.— The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens announced today that it will display a monumental work by American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976) lent by the Calder Foundation, New York. Bright red and measuring 24 feet across, the striking Jerusalem Stabile (1976) will welcome visitors to The Huntington beginning this spring, as a part of the new Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor Center, which opens on April 4. The painted metal sculpture will be installed in a grassy stroll garden just west of the new admissions building.

The Huntington also acquired for the new visitor center Calder’s series of six Bicentennial Tapestries (1975) to hang in the lobby of the new Rothenberg Hall; a 1964 ceramic mural made by Los Angeles artist Doyle Lane (1925- 2002) for the courtyard of the new June and Merle Banta Education Center; and a 1934 mural by Southern California artist Millard Sheets (1907-1989) for the new Stewart R. Smith Board Room. All of these works are gifts to The Huntington.

“We are delighted with the addition of these bold works of 20th-century American art to our new education and visitor center,” said Kevin Salatino, Hannah and Russel Kully director of the art collections at The Huntington.  “Art is central to the mission here, and now more than ever we are foregrounding art by placing it at the entrance to the grounds. These are wonderful gifts, beautifully suited to our collecting priorities, and dovetailing perfectly with the opportunities the new complex affords.”

Jerusalem Stabile by Alexander Calder
Among the last monumental sculptures that Alexander Calder would make in his lifetime, Jerusalem Stabile was installed on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem in 1977, the year after his death. The sprawling, vibrant red, 72 foot-long gift of the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation to the state of Israel was intended to serve as a symbol of modernity and hope in the country. The Jerusalem Stabile coming to The Huntington was donated by the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation to the Calder Foundation in 2005.  Since then, it has served as the centerpiece of a 2006 public art exhibition in New York City, “Alexander Calder in New York,” and, in 2014, was on view at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.