Calder Gardens, dedicated to the work of sculptor Alexander Calder of Pennsylvanian sculpture royalty, opened in 2025 to … mediocre reviews? The Philadelphia Citizen called the new museum a “missed opportunity.” Google ratings indicate a 3.9-star rating out of five, with many noting how the architecture — a mirrored exterior surrounded by fragrant gardens, complete with a small, densely packed interior — distracted from the work. Ironically, even Alexander Calder’s kin, Alexander S.C. Rower, struggles to define how the architecture supports the pieces: he describes the space as a “hypogeum,” adding that it isn’t an altar to his grandfather, but rather “a place for reflection and reconnection to essence. Not a house of relics, not a memorial. A sacred spаce for self-cultivation.”
However, the museum is a maze, impervious to deep reflection, as illustrated by the above photo. Sculptures densely pack the small square footage, and children scatter across the floor, screaming. Parents place their hands onto the metal sculptures for stability, and hoards of spectators stuff the stairwells. The “hidden” area, where the curators concealed Calder’s paintings, is a small corridor that necessitates a single-file line. When tour guides pass, voices echo throughout the U-shaped room, interrupting any sense of inner sanctum the space could ostensibly offer. If strangers aren’t already spreading their bodies across the seats, visitors can bank on sitting on the floor, with their backs pressed against the pebbled walls. Most of the resting spectators were scrolling on TikTok, calling a friend, or taking a brief nap — shamelessly beside tired tour guides too busy with touchy kids to notice. How could you blame them, though? With all of its mismatched textures, the space is exhausting to look at.
Similarly, the museum’s planes shift, with the support beams, wall materials, and ceiling structure slipping into unsettled aberrations. Some areas, like where “Tentacles” lie, are puzzlingly globular, protruding in abstract black bumps throughout, while others, like the nearby “Jerusalem Stabile II,” lie encased in blank, flat walls. The spectacle the architecture creates, from its warring colors and textures, steals the viewer’s attention from Calder’s minimalistic work. The broadly monochromatic reds, blacks, yellows, whites, and occasional blues bore the viewer’s eyes into fatigue. However, Calder also painted two-dimensional works, which scatter a hidden wall near the edge of the exhibit. Each painting is indistinguishable from the next, made only more apparent by the lack of tags throughout the museum. Again, these choices were intentional by the staff, “We don’t want you to come and feel that you are at Calder Gardens to be taught about something,” said Juana Berrío, its senior director of programs, in The New York Times, “but to experience something that gives you some hints about yourself.”
Simply put, the architecture makes it impossible to take on Rower’s challenge to effectively see within yourself. Every space is cramped; the mirrors literally reflect the cacophony of bodies that swarm each crevice. To be clear, the architecture is impressive. The glossy vessel activates the surrounding garden’s colors. It emphasizes the beauty of the “natural” garden: one meticulously crafted and tamed in precise, manicured sections. Just don’t walk behind the gallery, where a stark lack of any greenery, as well as the dreadful, unmirrored black edge backside that faces the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, will catch your attention. If, as its curators describe, Calder Gardens is meant to reflect the viewer, then why is the mirror only present on the side with the least foot traffic? Though Calder Gardens creates a fascinating work of architecture, it fails at letting its viewers experience the art within it.
