About

Calder Gardens is not a museum. It is a multilayered cultural space to be navigated and experienced in different ways.

Calder Gardens builds on the legacy of Alexander Calder, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and a native Philadelphian. Centering Calder’s own passion for interdisciplinary collaborations, cross-media practices, impermanence, real-time experience, and experimentation at large, Calder Gardens is a place for art, culture, environmental awareness, introspection, and wellness.

An active series of ongoing and recurring activations transform Calder Gardens into an ever-evolving ecosystem of ideas, sounds, stories, and communities. Concerts, lectures, screenings, performances, readings, mindfulness practices, and wide-ranging programs create new understandings for the mind, body, and spirit.

Calder Gardens features a building conceived by Pritzker Prize–winning design practice Herzog & de Meuron and gardens by acclaimed landscape designer Piet Oudolf. It was founded in 2020 by a collective of Philadelphia philanthropists, in partnership with the Calder Foundation, New York; the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; the City of Philadelphia; and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The Trustees of Calder Gardens is a separate entity that provides strategic and financial support to sustain the vision for Calder Gardens, while the Barnes Foundation provides operational and administrative support.

We create an oasis for introspection and human connection by uniting Calder’s art with nature, architecture, and activations that nurture different ways of thinking, feeling, and understanding.

We connect Calder’s timeless spirit of experimentation to contemporary culture across disciplines, communities, and environments.

We welcome and inspire visitors from all backgrounds to gain new perspectives through our changing artworks, dynamic activations, and nature that transforms through the seasons.

We celebrate impermanence, movement, and the ever-changing cycles of life.

We’ll always be open to interpretation, so each visitor can discover meaning on their own terms.

Calder (1898–1976), whose career spanned much of the 20th century, is the most acclaimed and influential sculptor of our time. Born into a family of 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.

Calder was born in Philadelphia, and his connections to the city are grounded in the rich artistic lineage of his family. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, created the Swann Memorial Fountain, and his grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, sculpted the statue of William Penn on top of City Hall. Calder’s own work, The Ghost, hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Great Stair Hall.

Located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the heart of Philadelphia, Calder Gardens brings together the visionary architecture of Herzog & de Meuron and the meticulous garden design of Piet Oudolf to celebrate the human spirit through Calder’s art. Set within a landscape of more than 200 varieties of plants, the galleries feature a rotating selection of masterworks from the Calder Foundation, New York, and other private and public collections, displayed in harmony with nature and the changing seasons.

Crafted specifically for the presentation of Calder’s work, the landscape and architecture of Calder Gardens unfolds as a choreographed progression that moves visitors from a hectic cityscape to a more contemplative realm.

Discreetly nestled into the landscape, the almost 18,000-square-foot building is sheathed in softly reflective metal cladding that blurs the boundaries between architecture and the natural world.

Founded in 1978 in Basel, Switzerland, Herzog & de Meuron is led by Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and a team of senior partners and collaborators worldwide. With more than 500 team members, they work on projects globally from their main office in Basel, supported by studios in Berlin, Munich, Hong Kong, London, New York, and San Francisco. Known for innovative designs across scales—from homes to large public spaces like museums and stadiums—the firm has won prestigious awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf (b. 1944) is known for transforming garden design with his naturalistic planting style. His US projects include Battery Park and the Highline in New York and Lurie Garden in Chicago. Oudolf’s work emphasizes perennial plants and aims to create gardens that evolve beautifully through each season.

Juana Berrío, Marsha Perelman Senior Director of Programs
Morgan Lawrence, Associate Registrar
Erin Monda, Horticulture Manager
Bailey Roper, Program Coordinator

Alexander S. C. Rower, Chair
Ephraim Asili
Vic Brooks
Thom Collins
Lily Lyons
Joseph Neubauer
Marsha Perelman
Juana Berrío, Staff Liaison

Marsha Perelman, President
Michael Sternberg, Secretary
John Alchin, Treasurer
Joseph Neubauer, Assistant Treasurer
Fairfax Dorn
Deborah Hayes
Aileen Roberts
Alexander S. C. Rower
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Elizabeth Warshawer

Calder Gardens is located in Lenapehoking, on the unceded land, waters, and air of the Lenape Peoples. We honor that this land and its people are timeless, and we pay respect to their Elders—past, present, and future. We support the sovereignty of the Lenape Peoples and are committed to uplifting their autonomy and rights in their homelands. This commitment exemplifies a reciprocal relationship to all beings and elements, recognizing that we are not separate from Earth.