Alexander Calder

If your angle is right and the sky is clear, you can stand on the stairs inside the rotunda of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and see the grand works of three generations of a Philadelphia art dynasty. Off in the distance, City Hall looms, the sculptures that adorn it mightily designed by Alexander Milne Calder. A little closer is Logan Square Fountain, its stately statues done by Calder's son, Alexander. And up in that Art Museum rotunda hangs what we all now know is a mobile, this one done by that most prolific and whimsical sculptor of the mid-20th century, Alexander Calder, the son and grandson of those far-from-whimsical artists whose work appears up the Ben Franklin Parkway.

The immense 40,000-square-foot metal-and-glass sculpture that's suspended from the ceiling of the Pennsylvania Convention Center's grand hall isn't a Virgo after all. And despite what it says in the center's art brochure, it isn't Untitled, either. When the work, by New York artist Judy Pfaff, is dedicated today as part of a celebration of the completion of the center's ambitious art program, it will be called cirque Cirque. The title refers to the two steel-and-aluminum rings, one of them 130 feet in diameter, that are the sculpture's largest elements.

Leon Sitarchuk, a sculptor and artist praised for the power, grace and craftmanship of his works and loved by four decades of students, died Saturday at Chestnut Hill Hospital. He was 71 and had lived in North Wales. Mr. Sitarchuk, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, was born in Philadelphia. Throughout his life, he gave numerous one-man shows at galleries and art institutions in the city. His works of abstract, welded steel can be found in private collections, including the Sun Oil world headquarters and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and at outdoor locations, including South Street.

Lisa Maxine Reisman Halterman, 57, of Rittenhouse Square, owner of an eclectic gallery who was a patron of the arts, died at home Wednesday, June 6, of breast cancer. In 2005, after careers as a real estate agent and college administrator, Ms. Halterman pursued her love of art and opened Lisa M. Reisman et Cie off Rittenhouse Square. The gallery displayed original paintings, sculpture, jewelry, furniture, Baccarat crystal, handmade items for babies, old posters, and art nouveau and art deco soap and perfume labels she had collected over 20 years.

In the heady days of the '60s, '70s and '80s, corporations bought and developed art collections to line their wood-paneled offices and hallways. Having the works of Picasso or Frank W. Benson on the wall impressed clients and conveyed a message to employees: We're a company of quality and taste. But in the '90s, as corporations lay off thousands and close dozens of offices, that same art - often worth millions - is being donated, sold or auctioned. Having art, for some, "went from being an asset to being a liability," said Heather Gibson of ArtSouth, an art management consultant firm based in Manayunk.

There won't be an Alexander Calder museum on the Parkway after all. After a year of waiting for negotiations between the Calder Foundation of New York and the city over loans of art, financing and related concerns to be resolved, Gov. Rendell has withdrawn the offer of $15 million in state capital money to help fund the project. The deal-breaker appears to have been the reluctance of Calder family members to commit loans of art for extended periods. Without agreement on this key issue, private fund-raising to match Rendell's offer - a condition for receiving state money - stalled.

With a little hyperbole, Philadelphia's civic boosters have long proclaimed the Benjamin Franklin Parkway one of the world's great boulevards, sometimes likening it to the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Now, that description might actually have some chance of materializing, and in the not-too-distant future. Judge Stanley Ott's decision to allow the Barnes Foundation to move to Center City creates at least the possibility that the Parkway will become what its planners envisioned: home to a world-class assemblage of cultural attractions.

Three art sales next weekend will offer works by major 20th-century figures - a quintessential example of an Alexander Calder mobile, an untitled oil-on-canvas by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, and a bronze cast by an artist not usually identified with sculpture, Thomas Eakins. The Calder mobile is among 180 lots of modern and contemporary works of art that will be offered by Freeman's beginning at 2 p.m. May 16 at the gallery at 1808 Chestnut St. Titled Azul, Amarillo, Blanco, Sobre Rojo and one of three Calders in the sale, it is expected to bring $100,000 to $150,000, according to presale estimates in the $35 catalog, accessible online at www.freemansauction.

Art may be at its greatest when it is still simple and raw. Then we often glimpse greatness to come; then we often see the artist most clearly. Alexander Calder, the Philadelphia sculptor whose 110th birth anniversary is this year, is a case in point. Like many famous artists, he had all the technical and financial resources a sculptor could hope for, and he used them in the production of his large mobiles and stabiles. But he also sat at his bench, and over a lifetime produced a prodigious body of one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted jewelry, and countless other small works.

One of Mary Kilroy's jobs is to keep bad art from happening. Or at least to keep it from being inflicted on the city of Philadelphia. Like the time a member of the design development team working on the Society Hill Sheraton came up with the idea of installing a statue of W. C. Fields at the entrance to the hotel bar. Mary Kilroy doesn't much care for the late comedian who, in addition to disliking dogs and children, didn't much care for...

Lisa Maxine Reisman Halterman, 57, of Rittenhouse Square, owner of an eclectic gallery who was a patron of the arts, died at home Wednesday, June 6, of breast cancer. In 2005, after careers as a real estate agent and college administrator, Ms. Halterman pursued her love of art and opened Lisa M. Reisman et Cie off Rittenhouse Square. The gallery displayed original paintings, sculpture, jewelry, furniture, Baccarat crystal, handmade items for babies, old posters, and art nouveau and art deco soap and perfume labels she had collected over 20 years.

Three art sales next weekend will offer works by major 20th-century figures - a quintessential example of an Alexander Calder mobile, an untitled oil-on-canvas by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, and a bronze cast by an artist not usually identified with sculpture, Thomas Eakins. The Calder mobile is among 180 lots of modern and contemporary works of art that will be offered by Freeman's beginning at 2 p.m. May 16 at the gallery at 1808 Chestnut St. Titled Azul, Amarillo, Blanco, Sobre Rojo and one of three Calders in the sale, it is expected to bring $100,000 to $150,000, according to presale estimates in the $35 catalog, accessible online at www.freemansauction.

For more than two decades, they've been out of public view, feared lost, feared destroyed, feared - at the least - grotesquely faded or damaged. But from a cluster of nondescript plastic tubs stuck in an out-of-the-way storage room in the bowels of a Center City office tower, they were ferreted out at last, still bright and essentially unmarred. And now, for the first time since the mid-1980s, the vanished Alexander Calder banners - part of one of the greatest public art legacies in Philadelphia history - will be on public view until March at the Central Branch of the Free Library on Logan Square.

Art may be at its greatest when it is still simple and raw. Then we often glimpse greatness to come; then we often see the artist most clearly. Alexander Calder, the Philadelphia sculptor whose 110th birth anniversary is this year, is a case in point. Like many famous artists, he had all the technical and financial resources a sculptor could hope for, and he used them in the production of his large mobiles and stabiles. But he also sat at his bench, and over a lifetime produced a prodigious body of one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted jewelry, and countless other small works.

There won't be an Alexander Calder museum on the Parkway after all. After a year of waiting for negotiations between the Calder Foundation of New York and the city over loans of art, financing and related concerns to be resolved, Gov. Rendell has withdrawn the offer of $15 million in state capital money to help fund the project. The deal-breaker appears to have been the reluctance of Calder family members to commit loans of art for extended periods. Without agreement on this key issue, private fund-raising to match Rendell's offer - a condition for receiving state money - stalled.

With a little hyperbole, Philadelphia's civic boosters have long proclaimed the Benjamin Franklin Parkway one of the world's great boulevards, sometimes likening it to the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Now, that description might actually have some chance of materializing, and in the not-too-distant future. Judge Stanley Ott's decision to allow the Barnes Foundation to move to Center City creates at least the possibility that the Parkway will become what its planners envisioned: home to a world-class assemblage of cultural attractions.

The Eagle is landing tomorrow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Eagle is a 40-foot sculpture by Alexander Calder, the Philadelphia-born inventor of the mobile, of which the museum has one of its very own - the 34-foot-long Ghost that hangs in the Great Stair Hall. The Eagle is what Calder called a stabile - a standstill mobile. It is an imposing figure, made of steel, painted bright red. "It's a dynamic work," said Anne D'Harnoncourt, director and chief executive officer of the museum, yesterday.

Philadelphia already has one museum dedicated to a great sculptor, Auguste Rodin. If Mayor Rendell's efforts prove fruitful, it could have another that showcases the work of Alexander Calder, inventor of the mobile. When Rendell learned that the Alexander Calder Foundation of Woodstock, N.Y., was thinking of opening a Calder museum at a location yet to be determined, he invited foundation director Alexander S.C. Rower to visit Philadelphia. Rower did so in November, and came away favorably disposed toward, as he put it yesterday, "doing something in Philadelphia.

If your angle is right and the sky is clear, you can stand on the stairs inside the rotunda of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and see the grand works of three generations of a Philadelphia art dynasty. Off in the distance, City Hall looms, the sculptures that adorn it mightily designed by Alexander Milne Calder. A little closer is Logan Square Fountain, its stately statues done by Calder's son, Alexander. And up in that Art Museum rotunda hangs what we all now know is a mobile, this one done by that most prolific and whimsical sculptor of the mid-20th century, Alexander Calder, the son and grandson of those far-from-whimsical artists whose work appears up the Ben Franklin Parkway.

Alexander Calder, credited with launching sculpture into space with his dancing mobiles, was honored Wednesday by the U.S. Postal Service with a strip of five 32-cent commemoratives of his artwork. Calder (1898-1976), who was born in Germantown, practically grew up in a studio. His father and grandfather were sculptors and his mother a painter, but young Calder opted for engineering because, he once said, "I like mechanical things. " After earning his degree in 1919 from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., Calder bounced around jobs as a draftsman, salesman and logger.