Mountains and Clouds is a sculpture by Alexander Calder located in the Hart Senate Office Building.
Background
The Hart Senate Office Building, first occupied in 1982 and named for Michigan Senator Philip A. Hart, broke with tradition. Unlike its predecessors, the Hart Building boasted a contemporary, energy-efficient design that could accommodate a growing number of staff members and various technological innovations. The building's centerpiece is a towering, asymmetrical -high atrium whose skylight brightens corridors and offices.
While the building was under construction, a panel of curators was charged with identifying potential sculptors and establishing criteria for the commission of a contemporary work to enliven the atrium. Alexander Calder and four other artists were invited to submit proposals. Calder was approached through his dealer, Klaus Perls, on July 29, 1975, just after his 77th birthday. A sketch and a model for Mountains and Clouds were submitted by November and, in April 1976, Calder's innovative design was accepted.
Design and delays
On November 10, 1976, Calder brought the Mountains and Clouds maquette—his sheet-metal model—to Washington, D.C., to present it to the Architect of the Capitol and finalize the placement of the piece. After making minor adjustments to two of the clouds, he expressed satisfaction with the maquette as positioned in a model of the atrium. This proved to be a final visit: Calder died of a heart attack that night after he returned to New York City. Despite his death, the approval of the maquette and the siting of the work meant that fabrication of the full-sized sculpture could proceed. But in 1979, fabrication was delayed and nearly terminated when public funds for the sculpture were eliminated from the costly construction budget for the Hart Building.
Financial assistance materialized in 1982 through Senator Nicholas F. Brady, who believed the Calder sculpture to be "the right work for the right place at the right time." As New Jersey’s senator for eight months—appointed to a vacancy pending election of a successor—Brady wished to present a gift to the Senate on his departure and offered to raise the needed funds. Together with art collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon and former Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, Brady formed the Capitol Art Foundation, which accomplished the task. The Calder sculpture was installed in the atrium of the Hart Building in 1986.
In 2014, the Clouds were lowered for a safety analysis and never put back. On its website, the Architect of the Capitol explains: “Since the structural safety analysis identified the clouds as unsafe for reinstallation due to significant structural defects, the Architect of the Capitol, in consultation with the Calder Foundation, has determined that the best course of action is to refabricate the clouds to the artist’s original intent.”
Appearance
Because the interior of the atrium presents a complex background of doors, windows, balconies and stairwells capped by a coffered ceiling, Calder stressed simplicity in the design of the sculpture. Similarly, because of the polished white marble that dominates the space, he decided on a matte black surface for the entire piece. The mountains–- the stabile–- are made up of four flat, angular steel plates with five mountain peaks among them and two archlike legs, one branching off the other. The clouds–- the mobile–- consist of four overlapping, curvilinear aluminum plates. In the absence of any air source to propel them, they are turned by a computer-controlled motor, which generates random patterns. Shortly after their installation, the clouds ceased to move when a mechanical problem with the design of the main bearing prevented the motor-driven shaft from turning the clouds. After an exhaustive inspection of the bearing system, the office of the Senate superintendent awarded a contract in October 2001 for the redesign and manufacture of a new bearing system that will again set the clouds in motion.