Seattle Art Museum Gets Major 48-Work Gift of Alexander Calder Works from Former Microsoft Presiden (Medina: new home)

[homesinseattle]

Good news for lovers of art: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/new...234663088/amp/

“In 1988, collector and former Microsoft president Jon Shirley acquired his first work by the preeminent 20th-century sculptor Alexander Calder. The 1970 mobile, titled Squarish, has long resided in the Shirley family room. In the 35 years since, Shirley, first with his late wife Mary Shirley and now with Kim Shirley, has amassed one of the most important collections of Calder, always waiting for the right works by Calder to become available so he could purchase them.

Some years, they might acquire only one Calder or none at all. In others, like in 1999, the Shirleys would acquire as many as seven pieces, like Dispersed Objects with Brass Gong (1948), which hangs in the dining room. These are just some of the major works, like Fish (1942), Gamma (1947), and Bougainvillier (1947), that make up the Shirleys’ Calder holdings.

Jon has been looking for great Calders for decades,” Alexander S. C. Rower, Calder’s grandson and president of the Calder Foundation, said in a recent interview. “He’s been taking his time, building his collection, never in any rush. He trusted his own eyes and bought magnificent works.”

But soon, the Shirleys will say goodbye to their Calders as they leave their home in Medina, Washington, and head to their new home of the Seattle Art Museum, where Jon and Kim are both currently trustees. As part of their gift, the Shirleys will give SAM 48 works by Calder, spanning the artist’s career, with mobiles at various sizes from the large-scale to the intimately small, as well as works on paper. (The approximate value of the 48-work donation is $200 million, according to Christie’s West Coast chairman Ellanor Notides, who did its appraisal.)

The donated works will go on view at SAM in November as part of an exhibition celebrating the gift that the Shirleys have also given $1 million toward realizing; it will be accompanied by a catalogue. “I’ve been collecting the works of Alexander Calder for 35 years, and it seemed like a good time to consider giving that part of our collection to the museum, but in a way that would help activate the museum now,” Jon Shirley said in an interview with ARTnews.“

[leastprime]

that's a huge collection especially since Calder was already famous when Shirley started collecting.
Can't wait to see them.
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