Calder Gardens

Calder Gardens An oasis where Calder’s art moves with nature, architecture, and activations that shift how we see and feel. Now .

The Moon Alignment Series returns June 29 with a gathering during the full moon. 🌕Held each month, the series offers a c...
06/18/2026

The Moon Alignment Series returns June 29 with a gathering during the full moon. 🌕

Held each month, the series offers a contemplative practice shaped by the relationship between the sun, moon, and earth. These recurring alignments provide a framework for reflecting on motion and stillness, both in the world around us and within our own experience.

Led by Calder Gardens Contemplative Arts Fellow Isha Strasser (), each session begins with a brief discussion before moving into walking meditation, silent meditation, and time for reflection. Together, these practices invite participants to slow down, pay attention, and spend time with what emerges in the moment.

Drawing on decades of contemplative practice, Strasser's approach brings together mindfulness, movement, and observation, creating space for individual reflection within a shared experience.

Moon Alignment Series: Full Moon
📅 Monday, June 29
🕒 11am–12:30pm
📍 Calder Gardens

🎟️ Limited capacity. Reserve your spot ➡️ https://bit.ly/4e6Ivci

Eremurus 'Romance' (foxtail lily) rising above the garden.For a brief period each year, these tall flower spikes emerge ...
06/15/2026

Eremurus 'Romance' (foxtail lily) rising above the garden.

For a brief period each year, these tall flower spikes emerge above the surrounding plantings, bringing a vertical rhythm to the landscape. Their pale blooms catch the light differently throughout the day, standing out against the softer textures and movement of the grasses below.

Designed by Piet Oudolf, the gardens are shaped by contrast as much as color—moments of height and openness appearing alongside dense layers of foliage and bloom. Right now, Eremurus 'Romance' (foxtail lily) is one of the season's most striking examples.

Plan your visit to Calder Gardens in Philadelphia ➡️ https://bit.ly/4e0AWUC

A few hours without notifications, conversation, or the pressure to be anywhere else.Silent Days at Calder Gardens offer...
06/13/2026

A few hours without notifications, conversation, or the pressure to be anywhere else.

Silent Days at Calder Gardens offer dedicated time for quiet attention. With reduced capacity and no use of electronic devices, visitors are invited to spend time in the galleries and gardens at their own pace—walking, sitting, reading, sketching, meditating, or simply observing.

Throughout the afternoon, designated areas for reflection, drawing, writing, and meditation are available across the site, with chairs, tables, and meditation cushions provided. The experience is shaped by what you bring to it and what you notice along the way.

Designed as a reduced-sensory environment, Silent Days support visitors with autism, dementia, and other sensory sensitivities, while offering a more spacious and grounded experience for anyone seeking a quieter way to spend time.

Silent Day at Calder Gardens
📅 Wednesday, June 24
🕒 3–7pm ET
📍 Calder Gardens

Reserve your spot ➡️ https://bit.ly/4ufPrKg

A stretch of Salvia in bloom.Salvia 'Wesuwe' (Wesuwe meadow sage) and Salvia 'May Night' (May Night meadow sage) are beg...
06/11/2026

A stretch of Salvia in bloom.

Salvia 'Wesuwe' (Wesuwe meadow sage) and Salvia 'May Night' (May Night meadow sage) are beginning to fill the gardens with layers of purple, violet, and deep burgundy. Up close, the individual flowers are small. Together, they create broad drifts of color that shift across the landscape.

Designed by Piet Oudolf, the gardens are everchanging as different plants emerge, flower, and recede. Right now, these salvias are among the many perennials helping shape the season.

Plan your visit to Calder Gardens in Philadelphia ➡️ https://bit.ly/4e0AWUC

What did Alexander Calder listen to when he performed "Cirque Calder"?On June 16, artist and composer Gryphon Rue () joi...
06/07/2026

What did Alexander Calder listen to when he performed "Cirque Calder"?

On June 16, artist and composer Gryphon Rue () joins Calder Foundation archivist and musician Michael Mandeville for a listening session exploring the sounds behind Calder’s legendary miniature wire circus.

Using a gramophone similar to the one Calder used in the 1920s and 1930s, Rue and Mandeville will play selections from the artist’s record collection, including marches, waltzes, popular jazz, and other recordings that helped shape the atmosphere of his performances.

The evening also looks at the role sound played in "Cirque Calder." While the circus is often remembered for its hand-crafted performers and inventive mechanics, Calder carefully considered music, acoustics, and sound effects as part of the experience. Together, these elements reveal another side of his creative practice and the influences that informed it.

Rue is an artist, composer, and musician whose work combines collage, improvisation, and recorded sound. He is also a featured artist in Calder Gardens’ Artists as Gardens series, and his audio installation "Sound Passages" is currently on view in the Curve Gallery. Mandeville is an archivist and researcher at the Calder Foundation as well as a musician and composer.

People Talking: Calder’s Noise, a Cirque Calder Listening Session with Gryphon Rue and Michael Mandeville
📅 Tuesday, June 16
🕒 6–7:30pm
📍 Calder Gardens
🎟️ Register ➡️ https://bit.ly/4vqF6Mx

Early summer in the gardens. The path curves through plantings by Piet Oudolf (), where new growth, blooms, and textures...
06/06/2026

Early summer in the gardens.

The path curves through plantings by Piet Oudolf (), where new growth, blooms, and textures continue to change week by week. Alongside them, the stainless-steel façade designed by Herzog & de Meuron () shifts with the weather, the light, and the landscape around it.

No two visits are quite the same. The gardens evolve through the seasons, and the building reflects those changes back into the space.

Plan your visit to Calder Gardens in Philadelphia ➡️ https://bit.ly/4e0AWUC

© 2026 Calder Gardens.

Before the mobiles and stabiles, there was the circus.Between 1926 and 1931, Alexander Calder created "Cirque Calder", a...
06/06/2026

Before the mobiles and stabiles, there was the circus.

Between 1926 and 1931, Alexander Calder created "Cirque Calder", a miniature performance work made of wire, fabric, found materials, and hand-built figures. Packed into suitcases and performed for friends, artists, and fellow creatives, the circus became an important part of his early practice and helped shape many of the ideas that would carry through his work for decades to come.

This summer, Pictures in Motion presents two films that explore the legacy of "Cirque Calder". Carlos Vilardebó’s "Le Cirque Calder" (1961) captures Calder performing the circus himself in his studio in France, animating acrobats, animals, and performers through movement, timing, and improvisation. Also on view is "Cirque Calder on Film" (2026), a new documentary directed by Vic Brooks that traces the history of the circus and examines how films, archival footage, and documentation have shaped our understanding of this singular work over time.

Together, the films offer a closer look at a project that exists somewhere between sculpture, performance, theater, and film—and at a moment in Calder’s career when many of the ideas that would later define his work were just beginning to take shape.

Pictures in Motion: Celebrating Cirque Calder
📅 June 11–August 3
🕒 Screened daily during open hours
📍 Calder Gardens
🎟️ Free with admission ➡️ https://bit.ly/4v0uuUT

All films produced and commissioned by the Calder Foundation, New York, in collaboration with Vic Brooks. All artworks by Alexander Calder © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

📷 Alexander Calder with Cirque Calder (1926–31) in his Paris studio, 1929. Photo by Sasha Stone. Artwork © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Spending time with “The Putney Mobile” in the Open Plan Gallery.On public view for only the second time in its history, ...
05/25/2026

Spending time with “The Putney Mobile” in the Open Plan Gallery.

On public view for only the second time in its history, the work unfolds gradually as you stay with it. The mobile’s composition is in constant flux—changing with the light, the air, and where you stand.

Calder spoke about the role of the viewer in completing a work. Repeated viewings can facilitate novel observations.

Plan your visit to Calder Gardens in Philadelphia ➡️ https://bit.ly/4w9A5ZZ

© 2026 Calder Gardens. All works by Calder © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

A quiet moment to look around. 🌀Held within the curve of the wall, the space is shaped to slow you down. Everything happ...
05/19/2026

A quiet moment to look around. 🌀

Held within the curve of the wall, the space is shaped to slow you down. Everything happening above and around you comes into focus a little differently from here.

Plan your visit to Calder Gardens in Philadelphia ➡️ https://bit.ly/4w7H31C

© 2026 Calder Gardens.

The Moon Alignment Series continues June 1 with an after-hours gathering during the full moon. 🌕Led by Calder Gardens Co...
05/17/2026

The Moon Alignment Series continues June 1 with an after-hours gathering during the full moon. 🌕

Led by Calder Gardens Contemplative Arts Fellow Isha Strasser, each session moves through a shared contemplative practice shaped by the alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth. The evening begins with a brief discussion, followed by walking meditation, silent meditation, and time for reflection.

As the light shifts across the galleries and gardens, the experience unfolds through movement, stillness, and attention to what changes from one moment to the next.

Strasser’s work draws from contemplative practice, ancient wisdom traditions, disability studies, and ecological thinking, creating space for participants to connect with the environment around them and their own experience within it.

Moon Alignment Series: Full Moon
📅 Monday, June 1
🕒 6–7:30pm ET
📍 Calder Gardens

🎟 Limited capacity. Reserve your spot ➡️ https://bit.ly/3RA1uEw

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2100 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy
Philadelphia, PA
19103

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