A different kind of landmark
Alexander Calder’s Janey Waney brought a striking sculptural presence to Gramercy Park. The Trustees’ March 2014 notice described it as having stood in the Park for the preceding three years.
October 2011
Installing the loan
The Trustees’ October 6 announcement thanked neighbor Alexander S. C. Rower, president of the Calder Foundation, for a one-year loan of Janey Waney. The sculpture had been installed the previous day in the southeast quadrant at no expense to the Park.
Photographs preserve the temporary scaffolding and the completed installation. Trustee Tom Pike placed the loan within the Park’s longer relationship with sculpture and garden ornament. The initial one-year term is the arrangement recorded in 2011; later developments are described separately below.
An international journey
That notice explained the sculpture’s appearance at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht and its planned inclusion in a Calder exhibition in the Rijksmuseum gardens in Amsterdam. The accompanying report identified the work as a 1969 standing mobile.
Back in the neighborhood’s photographs
An August 2016 newsletter again featured Janey Waney in the Park, in a photograph credited to Sean Brady.
2021
The loan’s next chapter
The Gramercy Park Block Association’s August 23, 2021 letter reported that Janey Waney had been removed on August 18 for painting and possible sale after roughly ten years in the Park. It thanked the Rogath family for the loan.
The letter mentioned a possible replacement sculpture without confirming one. The photographs here show the Calder during its loan to the Park.
