After a 12-Year Absence, Alexander Calder’s Mammoth Last Sculpture Finally Returns in Full to Capitol Hill

More than a decade after Alexander Calder’s final sculpture was suddenly disassembled and partly removed from its longtime home in the Hart Senate Office Building, the work is at last one step closer to returning in full to Capitol Hill. Mountains and Clouds, a 51-foot-tall installation made from painted aluminum sheets, is the famed sculptor’s only work that combines standing pieces (five triangle mountains) with his signature hanging mobile (four oval-ish clouds). It also represents Calder’s final act as an artist.

In 1976, the design was chosen to fill the Senate building’s nine-story atrium; just a few months after the announcement, he spent his last day alive in Washington, D.C., presenting a scaled model of the sculpture to congressional officials and sizing up its future home. By the next morning, Calder had died of a heart attack at age 78. The artist’s estate approved the posthumous creation of Mountains and Clouds—the only time such permission was granted—and the sculpture was formally dedicated during a ceremony on May 5, 1987.

Aside from its significance as one of the artist’s largest pieces (the clouds alone weighed 4,300 pounds), some observers remarked tongue-in-cheek upon its symbolism within a government space. Brady of New Jersey, who personally fundraised the $650,000 needed to complete its construction, told the New York Times’ Francis X. If we don’t get those clouds up soon, they’ll be flying paper airplanes in the atrium.” For roughly 30 years, the installation’s black landscape stood in powerful contrast against the atrium’s white marble interior.

But in 2014, the sculpture’s “clouds” were lowered to the ground without warning, because officials feared for their structural safety in the aftermath of a 2011 earthquake. In 2016, they were removed completely. They didn’t tell anybody.

They chopped them up.” Slow-moving efforts to stabilize the sculpture were criticized. A post shared by Calder Foundation (@calderfoundation) Twelve years and $12 million from two private donors later, the clouds have been rebuilt with brand-new sheets of lighter, carbon-fiber composite material. Now, the much-anticipated reunion of these clouds with Calder’s mountain is moving forward.

Construction crews gathered last week inside the atrium to begin the reinstallation process, which includes hanging and balancing the clouds and then motorizing them, such that they gently rotate around the mountain peaks. This was originally intended in Calder’s plans, but difficulties during the sculpture’s original installation meant that the clouds had stood still since 1992. Getting them to drift, officials speculate, could take until sometime in November.