This is what happened at the Berkshire Museum

In 1933, Berkshire Museum Director Laura Bragg exhibited the work of four Berkshire residents: Alexander Calder, George Morris of the Fiffh Avenue cubists, Calvert Coggeshall, and Alma de Gersdorff. While his fanily summered in the Berkshires, this was Calder’s first exhibit in the United States. Calder gained fame in Paris, where he used simple iron wire as his medium, twisting it into varying curves and forms. Calder was considered a pioneer in his use of industrial materials and fabrication proceses. In the opinion of many art experts, much of contemporary sculpture has been influenced by his work. Bragg purchased two of Calder’s early modern sculptures exhibited at this show for the Twentieth Century Gallery. In an Art Digest article about Calder’s work, written just after the purchase, Bragg said: “They succeed in giving freshly creative form of motion devoid from representation. Whether or not they are the introduction of a new art form, I am sure they have real significance. I have watched with curiosity their effect upon the general public. People sit quietly before them, apparently stilled and quieted by something, perhaps merely by the rhythm of the movement. But we have found it easy to make a Sunday afternoon crowd understand ‘abstract’ motion where they would be blank before abstract painting.” Bragg was the first American museum director to recognize Calder’s genius with her purchase of two motorized sculptures, The Arc and the Quadrant and Dancing Torpedo Shape.