The University of Arkansas boasts that it owns seven mobiles created by the world-renowned artist and kinetic sculpture pioneer Alexander Calder. When Edward Durell Stone designed the University's Fine Arts Center in 1950, he included eight Clader mobiles in the Concert Hall, misleadingly designating them as lighting fixtures so that administrators wouldn't nix them as "excludable deductibles." After all, the eight mobiles cost $2,500, and that's more than administrators like to pay for frills like public art.Where is the "missing" eighth Calder mobile? Did it get sold off to help pay for building a softball field on the site of the recently demolished Carlson Terrace Apartments designed by Stone? Was it given to the Walton Business College and used for other purposes like the Hindman Fund that was supposed to fund library purchases for the history department? Did we have a bunch of administrators with degrees in engineering and physics who failed to appreciate art and thought it a broken machine to be discarded like something in the University Museum? Maybe it was stolen, but if so why is no one trying to recover it? Calder mobiles are quite valuable and easily recognizable. Has anyone checked E-Bay?
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