Calder Gardens has finally opened to the public after several years of planning and construction.

The $90 million project is now the newest attraction to the Ben Franklin Parkway’s arts, culture, and tourism scene, writes Peter Dobrin for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Calder Gardens is named after Philadelphia artist Alexander Calder.

The new museum features a rich and vast representation of Philadelphia through its art created by not only Calder but his family. This includes the William Penn sculpture at City Hall by Alexander Milne Calder and the Swann Memorial Fountain in Logan Circle by his son, Alexander Stirling Calder.

The planners believe the timing of the museum’s opening comes at a critical one.

“Look, we live in very challenging times,” said Joseph Neubauer, the Philadelphia philanthropist whose gifts with his wife, Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer, served as the largest source of private money to the project. “The environment is not very stable, not just for the city, but for the state, for the country, for the world.”

He believes that art provides an escape, to look at and understand beautiful, and get away.

“Art and music take you to a different world,” Neubauer said. “They allow your mind to contemplate other things, rather than the here and now all the time.”

Read more about the opening of Calder Gardens and what it will bring to the city’s arts and culture scene in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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