The night of the sculpture’s debut on Grounds, unidentified vandals stole large portions of the artwork, leaving only small pieces and the base intact. The pranksters returned the parts 24 hours later, and the sculpture was restored, but the incident exacerbated already strained relations between contemporary art enthusiasts and anti-modernist groups.

Throughout the exhibition’s earlier tour in Richmond and on college campuses, including UVA, Mary Baldwin College and Randolph-Macon, there was always the eternal question: “But is it art?”

Both the question and its answers were often tinged with rather dark insinuations. Cold War rhetoric shaped the discussion of abstract art in the mid-20th century, in both Virginia and the broader national discourse. One viewer wrote to the Richmond Times-Dispatch to denounce the modernist artworks in the exhibition as products of intellectual Bohemianism at best and as subversive Communist tools at worst. In Washington, D.C., that summer, Rep. George A. Dondero (R-Michigan) argued on the steps of the U.S. Capitol that abstract art “destroy[ed] the high standards and priceless traditions of academic art.” The congressman condemned any artist who succumbed to impulses such as Dadaism, cubism and surrealism as a “soldier of the [Communist] revolution.”

Despite the raging culture wars and the ensuing McCarthyism, which blacklisted numerous contemporary artists in all media, the late 1950s saw a burgeoning embrace of modern art as something distinctly “American.” Rather than questioning the modern art form as something secretive and duplicitous, American audiences eventually began to regard modern artworks as embodiments of the liberated American spirit and as products of a freethinking democratic society.

Calder’s work continues this conversation today, as Tripes reclaims the artist’s relevance to the local and national political and cultural climate. The university’s renewed effort to integrate public art into the landscape of learning underscores the way an aesthetic object can not only delight but also prompt critical thinking. And today’s students, pondering the question posed 60 years ago, can respond that yes, indeed, it is art.

Meghan Holder is a 2008 graduate of the University of Virginia, where she earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Art History. Holder currently works as the research assistant in the archives of the Valentine Richmond History Center in Richmond.