Wichita’s losing an iconic sculpture, so let’s just make our own | Opinion

Bank of America has sold off the giant Calder mobile in the atrium of the Ruffin Building downtown, to be replaced with an old Stearman biplane, and some of my artsy friends are really up in arms about it.

I may have a solution. More on that in a minute.

The sculpture, by the late famed mobile-maker Alexander Calder (1898-1976), is being sold to the Calder Foundation in New York to become “a prominent part of their collection,” as BofA spokeswoman Diane Wagner described it to Eagle reporter Lindsay Smith.

That sounds really impressive until you Google it and find out that the foundation doesn’t have a public display space of its own, and shares a building with a furniture and mattress store.

I’m going to preface any further comments with the disclaimer that I am not an art guy, OK?

I’ve been in the Ruffin building more times than I can count, and can’t say that I ever gave the supersized 47-foot-tall objet d’art more than a passing glance.

The primary emotional response it invoked from me was: That’s kinda cool, but I better get upstairs so I don’t have to sit behind a pillar to cover Mike Pompeo or Sam Brownback or whatever other Republican luminary was speaking at the Pachyderm Club on a Friday.

But some people are really worked up about losing the sculpture.

Chase Billingham, Wichita State University sociologist and local social critic, lamented on Facebook: “I can’t think of anything that encapsulates Wichita’s trajectory over the past half century better than a downtown office building selling off an iconic piece of modern art and replacing it with an old airplane built by a company that once existed here but no longer does.” (Note: Stearman was folded into Boeing, and Boeing is coming back to Wichita after a 19-year hiatus).

Contrast that with this post from Ben Sauceda, executive director of the Kansas Aviation Museum, which is providing the 1934 Stearman biplane that will replace the Calder sculpture: “This is exciting to be a part of this historic move of a Stearman Kaydet into the Ruffin building. There are always naysayers, but displaying historic Wichita history is great.” (Note: Historic history is always the best kind).

I offer this solution: If we can’t keep the Calder mobile we have, let’s just build one ourselves.

The sculpture is essentially seven metal pipes, supporting eight metal discs, five red, three yellow. There are some connecting hardware joints, so it theoretically could move if it was subjected to a Kansas wind, which it never is in the lobby of the Ruffin Building.

It’d be a snap to make another one. The Yard has every kind of random pipe and sheet metal we could possibly need. Eagle reporter Chance Swaim has welding equipment we can use.

We could get paint for the discs for free from the Sedgwick County Hazmat Swap and Shop. County Commissioner Ryan Baty is founder and CEO of Mattress Hub, so he could probably set aside some space to house a foundation to give the effort the necessary gravitas.

Sauceda is right that Wichita has a proud history of aircraft manufacturing. But we also have a proud history of copying other cities’ municipal improvements.

▪ Oklahoma City built Bricktown; so we built Old Town.

▪ The original proposal for WaterWalk was sold as being similar to San Antonio’s famed River Walk (remember when we were promised canals and water taxis, LOL).

▪ The billion-dollar-plus Riverfront Legacy Master Plan, currently on pause, drew comparisons to Chicago’s Millennium Park, (at least from the consultants being paid $700,000 to draw up the plans).

▪ And currently, our city is moving toward trying to turn Douglas into a poor man’s version of Denver’s 16th Street Mall, (minus the Cheesecake Factory).

So making our own Calder-ish sculpture would be right in Wichita’s wheelhouse. We’ve had plenty of practice.

All we’d need is the measurements, a couple hundred bucks worth of metal, and a free weekend or two.

It would be Wichita’s most Wichita thing ever.

And if you think it’s a stupid idea, all I can say is, don’t be such a “naysayer.”