Explore the Newly Opened Calder Gardens in Philadelphia

Visitors should not think of Calder Gardens as a museum, even though its building and grounds, on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, are dedicated to a rotating display of sculptures, paintings, and drawings by Alexander Calder. “I hope that you feel it’s a sanctuary,” says the artist’s grandson Alexander S. C. Rower, of the $90 million cultural space, which was conceived by architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and landscape designer Piet Oudolf. “It’s a place for art and humans to get together.” 

Known for his hanging mobiles and grounded monumental stabiles that juxtapose abstract forms in harmonic tension, Calder was born in 1898 in Philadelphia to a family of artists. His grandfather Alexander Milne Calder created the 37-foot-tall statue of William Penn presiding atop City Hall and his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, designed the allegorical Swann Memorial Fountain in nearby Logan Circle. 

A group of Philadelphia philanthropists led by Joseph Neubauer approached Rower, president of the Calder Foundation, in 2017 about constructing a museum for his grandfather in his hometown. Rower answered with the idea of realizing something more akin to the encounters between architecture, art, and light experienced at places like the Rothko Chapel in Houston or Henri Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence, France. 

Neubauer agreed, as did the city, which made a long-term loan of the trapezoidal, 1.8-acre plot of land to the project. Jacques Herzog, the design lead, chose to excavate the property, carving out a series of subterranean gallery spaces that wrap around two outdoor garden settings for sculpture. 

Today, guests have multiple points of entry from the sidewalk along paths that meander through Oudolf’s gardens—a tapestry of wooded areas and meadows planted with naturalistic drifts of native species. The walkways converge at a circular plaza showcasing the dynamic bolted-metal stabile The Cock’s Comb in front of Herzog’s shed-like building. 

Clad in a soft-finish stainless steel, the structure reflects the sky and gardens and almost seems to dematerialize. Inside, visitors descend past a long horizontal window with a view of the busy thoroughfare. “We actually like its kineticism,” Rower says. Below, leaving the city behind, a sequence of spaces unfolds, alternatively soaring, compressed, open, and hidden, revealing some three dozen works of varying scale that are from the Calder Foundation or on loan from collections including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Several are installed in the two sunken gardens, whose walls will soon be draped with hanging plants and vines, and are visible through floor-to-ceiling windows from the large interior central gallery. Elsewhere, a jewel-box niche holds a George Nakashima table displaying small bronze sculptures by Calder’s father and grandfather, portrait paintings by his mother, and a self-portrait from when Calder was enrolled at The Art Students League of New York. “It’s an ode to the family and a literal altar to honor them,” says Rower.

Unlike other institutions, there are no labels or QR codes to be found. “You’re not going to learn Calder’s biography here,” suggests Rower, noting that information is all available online. “There’s nobody telling you what to think, what to feel, how to experience it. I hope people come here to meditate and let go of the tendrils of their daily lives.” 

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Winter issue under the headline “Moving Tribute.” Subscribe to the magazine.