Join us for a talk with Elizabeth Hutton Turner, professor of Art History at the University of Virginia, as she presents "Calder's Mobility." Turner is a professor and curator whose scholarship highlights Calder's international impact on modern art. Turner organized the 2004 exhibition Calder/Miró: A New Space for Imagination, serves as an advisor for the Calder Foundation, and is the author of works including Calder, Scale and the Problem of Seeing It (2021) and Framing a Paradox: Alexander Calder’s Hollow Egg (2021). Turner is currently working on a new project titled Alexander Calder: A Biography of Objects.

Alexander Calder enjoyed the widest international reputation of any modern American artist of his generation. During the 1920s and 30s, he had crossed the Atlantic more than 20 times—exhibiting far and wide, in solo and group shows across Paris, New York, Chicago, Hartford, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Basel, and Amsterdam. Meanwhile, as a member of the Abstraction-Création Group, he established deep connections with other well-known artists including Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Jean Hélion, Antoine Pevsner, and Naum Gabo.

This lecture examines the milestones of Calder’s career to understand how travel worked hand-in-hand with his newly mobile aesthetic models and social relations. If his Autobiography is to be taken at face value, Calder would have us believe that he became an artist seemingly out of conversation or happenstance—and yes, thin air! Attend this lecture to learn how this misconception came to be.

WHERE: Seattle Arts Museum: 1300 First Ave, Plestcheeff Auditorium, Seattle, WA 98122

WHEN: Friday, November 10th, starting at 2:00pm PT

INTERPRETERS: Lisa Holmberg

NOTE: This talk is free with museum admission. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Point of contact: Carson McCully

Image Description: Mobile with different abstract shapes in neutral colors.