Private Funds Pay for Sculpture Cut From Senate Building Plans

A 55-foot-tall Calder sculpture is being built with private funds to fill a Senate office building’s lobby laid bare by federal budget cuts.

Nicholas Brady, a wealthy Republican who served as New Jersey’s junior senator for eight months in 1982, raised money to pay for the mobile and stabile designed to fit in the cavernous Hart Senate Office Building.

The late Alexander Calder’s “Mountains and Clouds,” made of black steel, was originally to be installed in the white marble, nine-story atrium of the Hart building when it opened in early 1983.

But during a controversy over the building’s costs, money for the sculpture and for 32 other items was cut from its construction budget, lowering the price from $175 million to $138 million.

“They asked me to do the financial work,” Brady said. “The space cries out for it. If you don’t put something in that space, you’ll have dogs catching Frisbees at lunch time.”

The stabile, depicting a jagged range of mountains, is being built by the Segre Foundry in Connecticut. Crystallization Systems Inc. of Long Island, N.Y., is building the motor-driven mobile, which will represent clouds drifting overhead. Both companies have built Calder’s work before.

“With Calder gone and not here to do the fine-tuning, we thought it would be best to go through the people who have worked for him before,” said Elliott Carroll, executive assistant to the architect of the Capitol.

The sculpture should be completely installed by mid-February and an unveiling will likely be held in the spring, Carroll said.

The day before Calder died in 1976, he presented a model of the sculpture to George White, the Capitol architect.

Brady said he has raised from private contributions more than $400,000 to cover most of the costs for construction and installation of the work. He has had the help of Paul Mellon, an art collector, and former Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, head of the firm for which Brady works.