From Love Field to the Quadracci Pavilion
One of the first things you notice when you enter the Quadracci Pavilion is Alexander Calder’s Red, Black and Blue, suspended high above you. The colorful mobile is a natural fit for this soaring space, but its connection to the building goes beyond how well the two look together. Calder’s work actually has its own history of flight.
The story begins in 1968, when Red, Black and Blue was commissioned for the American Airlines terminal at Dallas Love Field. In 1973, it moved to Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport. Then, in 1987, Lloyd Pettit and Jane Bradley Pettit gave the work to Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport, bringing the Calder to Milwaukee.
When Santiago Calatrava was designing the Quadracci Pavilion, he specifically asked that the mobile become part of the new building. In 2000, it was placed on long-term loan to the Milwaukee Art Museum and installed in the Pavilion. Twenty years later, in 2020, Milwaukee County gifted the work to the Museum.
Today, the Calder seems perfectly at home in the Quadracci Pavilion. There is something wonderfully appropriate about a work that began in an airport now hanging in a building inspired by flight. Planes and birds move through the sky outside; Calder’s colorful shapes seem to take flight inside. It is a little piece of Milwaukee history, and a fitting meeting of Calder’s mobile and Calatrava’s architecture.
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Image: Alexander Calder (American, 1898–1976), Red, Black and Blue, commissioned 1968, completed 1973. Painted metal motorized mobile. 40 ft (1219.14 cm). Gift of MKE—Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport, M2020.49. © Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.