In the fall of 2022, Alexander Calder’s The Hawk for Peace (1968) returned to public view adjacent to the redwood grove on the southeast site of the Crescent Lawn at the University of California Berkeley. Since BAMPFA moved to its current downtown Berkeley location, the 11,684-pound sculpture underwent special conservation to prepare it for its new home.
To mark the reinstallation of the sculpture, Alex Taylor presented a lecture at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive considering the social orientation and political valences of Calder’s late stabiles. He explored how the early history of the sculpture exemplifies Calder’s entanglement in the fraught politics of public space in the late 1960s. Through The Hawk for Peace, Taylor examines how the multilayered meanings of Calder’s Modernism were negotiated through the encounter between his sculpture, its public, and the culture at large.
Watch a video of Taylor's lecture on BAMPFA's YouTune channel.
Alexander Calder, The Hawk for Peace (1968)