The bids flew fast and furious, but the Toledo Museum of Art prevailed last week when the gavel banged at the posh Sotheby's auction house in New York City.
And so, by summertime, the lawn outside the Monroe Street landmark will be home to a $4.1 million sheet-metal dinosaur.
Stegosaurus, a spiky red statue by the late mobile-meister, Alexander Calder, will be front-and-center in the museum's new sculpture garden, part of the institution's June centennial celebration. Robert F. Phillips, the museum's curator of 20th and 21st-century art, describes the sculpture as “optimistic, dramatic, yet whimsical.”
“Its cheerful, sunny red color will resonate when seen with other works in the collection,” he said yesterday.
Stegosaurus was executed in 1972 and 1973 by Mr. Calder, an American-born artist who spent most of his career in Paris, hobnobbing with the avant-garde and creating “drawings in space,” figurative sculptures made of wire. They evolved into his claim-to-fame “mobiles,” which are moving, shifting sculptures sometimes suspended from the ceiling or mounted atop “stabiles,” static sculptures that suggest depth using flat planes. Later in his career, Mr. Calder created monumental stabiles like Stegosaurus. His work is a staple abstraction in public plazas all over the world.
The Toledo museum was represented as an “anonymous party” at the auction by New York dealer James Cohan. Tuesday's art sale was described as “packed and energetic,” with 13 auction records set. Eighteen items sold above their high estimates, including Stegosaurus: its pre-auction value was set at $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
The Calder sale set two records, according to Sotheby's: it's the first time a stabile of such a scale has been offered at auction, and the $4,185,750 price is a record high for a Calder piece at auction.
This Stegosaurus is a smaller version of a 50-foot monster that dominates the Alfred E. Burr Mall in Hartford. The “intermediate stegosaurus” was sold by the Calder estate, said Barbara Stahl, museum public relations head, and bought with money donated by Marshall Field's stores and the Libbey Endowment, a museum acquisitions mainstay.
It will be installed on a long, curving walkway spanning the museum's Monroe Street lawn, with other sculptures by Ellsworth Kelly, Tony Smith, Mark diSuvero, Albert Paley, Jim Dine, and Deborah Butterfield.
“This is a fabulous piece, a real high-quality work of art,” Ms. Stahl said. “It will be a spectacular addition.”
“Our sculpture garden [was] conceived as an outdoor gallery, reflecting the same high quality and excitement found inside the museum,” Toledo museum director Roger Berkowitz said. “It will have the advantage, however, of being a place where someone can also enjoy a brown-bag lunch.”
Some Toledoans may recall Ascar, a colorful 20-foot Calder stabile that stood inside the Franklin Park Mall for many years. It was slated originally for the sculpture walk, but curators determined it would not stand up to outdoor winds. It was sold at Pace Auctioneers in 1995 for an undisclosed sum. “We've been looking for a replacement ever since,” Ms. Stahl said.
The Toledo museum owns one other Calder. Mobile: Horizontal Black with Red Sieve is small and mounted high in Gallery One; it is somewhat overwhelmed by a nearby Louise Nevelson wall sculpture.
But the red dinosaur won't fade into the background, Mr. Phillips said. At about 13 feet high and 14 feet wide, “about the size of an SUV,” it will be visible up and down Monroe Street.
First Published November 23, 2000, 1:37 p.m.
