Mattatuck Received Funding To Create Calder Corner

WATERBURY — The Mattatuck Museum has been awarded a $68,000 grant from the CT Health and Educational Facilities Authority for a partnership project with the Waterbury Arts Magnet School in the fall of 2004.

The first year of the project will involve 250 ninth and tenth grade students from Waterbury’s new Arts Magnet High School as they create a permanent installation of works by Alexander Calder. Calder was one of the great artists of the 20th Century who lived and worked in Connecticut. His mobiles and stabiles were fabricated in metal working shops in Waterbury.

The installation will allow the creation of a “Calder Corner,” where pieces from the Mattatuck’s collection can be accessible to future students and visitors to the museum.

Students will work together in the hands-on, museum-based activities that include every aspect of the project including research, interviews with workers who made Calder pieces, and the development of educational gallery guides. They will also serve as tour guides for student groups when the installation is complete.

During the first part of the partnership, the focus will be on the study of Calder’s work, including the history and art of the time period, the kinetic theory of movement, and the poetry and theater of Calder’s surrealist circle in Paris.

The second phase involves working with the museum’s collections, interviewing surviving friends, collectors and metal works, and the development of new scripts for the Calder exhibit.

“Calder Corner” will open to the public in the fall of 2005, and students will then be trained as art leaders for peer groups from the high school, and tour leaders for younger students.