A partially dismantled sculpture by Alexander Calder in Washington, D.C. is, at long last, in the process of being restored, according to Roll Call, a publication that focuses on Capitol Hill-based news.
The sculpture in question, Mountains and Clouds, fills the 90-foot-high, skylit atrium of the Hill’s Hart Senate Office Building, which was constructed in the 1970s and first occupied in 1982. Calder’s proposal was chosen from a group of five sculptors who were tasked with designing “a work that would harmonize with the atrium’s surrounding white marble architecture and yet stand apart from the cluttering distraction of adjacent doors, windows, and balconies,” according to the Senate website.
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Calder made the final adjustments to his sheet-metal maquette on November 10, 1976; he died the following day in New York City.
Construction on Mountains and Clouds began a decade later, in 1986, and the monumental sculpture, made out of black-painted aircraft aluminum, was dedicated the following year.
It is—or, rather, was—51 feet tall overall. In 2016, the 75-foot-wide “clouds” portion of the sculpture, which was suspended from the ceiling and designed to rotate via a computer-controlled motor, was removed after a structural analysis revealed safety concerns. The peaked “mountains” have remained in the atrium ever since, without the cloud component.
The Senate website states that the four-piece cloud mobile “will be refabricated and reinstalled as funding becomes available.” That seems to have finally happened, thanks to private philanthropy secured by the Calder Foundation, which is run by Calder’s grandson Alexander S. C. Rower.
Rower told Roll Call that the restoration project is currently underway, and that it will be completed later this year. He also said the project will see the realization of Calder’s “original vision for the work,” which included a rotating cloud mechanism.
