Alexander Calder: Le Guichet July 16, 2010

When Alexander Calder was selected by Lincoln Center for a 14-foot-high outdoor sculpture, it was a major victory for the home team in the big-league global competition among contemporary artists. "He is one hundred percent American," Fernand Leger had proclaimed in an effusive welcoming message for a gallery show in Paris more than three decades before. 'Le Guichet' offers viewers a chance to wander into and through its spiderlike apertures, looking up at the blue sky and marveling not only at the way Calder cut these graceful forms from plates of steel but also at the lively way in which he assembled them.