Thursday, January 20, 2011

A Calder Stabile Makes a Move

New York Times, June 16, 1979,

A Calder Stabile Makes a Move,

Alexander Calder, the late sculptor, was known initially for his mobile sculptures. In later years he was known for his "stabiles," monumental and motionless structures in sheet metal or steel plate.

One of his stabiles was mobile for a while, a feat that cost the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey $32,000. The original cost of the work was $100,000.

Calder's "World Trade Center Stabile," 15 tons of steel work 25 feet high, has been moved in its assembled entirety from the West Street side of the center and was in place yesterday at a new site, at Church and Vesey Streets, about five blocks away in the complex. It had been on the West Street side since its original installation in 1973, but the center's owner, the Port Authority, decided that this site had not proved best, after all.

The hope had been that the original site would become part of a landscaped park that would serve as an appropriate setting for the orange-tinted red work, which reminds some people of three giant sails and others of three bent wings on end.

But this hope has not been realized and is a while away at best, because of delays in building the nearby Westway superhighway and the Battery Park City apartment-and-office project, said the authority spokesman, Lloyd Schwalb.

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