"In spring 2023 the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) announced that patrons Jon and Kim Shirley had generously gifted the Shirley Family Collection to the museum. The collection-one of the most important private holdings of Calder's art-is the result of thirty-five years of thoughtful acquisitions and features many significant examples from his production. It comprises fifty-four artworks representing every decade of the artist's career, including superlative examples of his formative works, hanging mobiles, and standing stabiles dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. Calder: In Motion; The Shirley Family Collection accompanies SAM's inaugural exhibition of works from the collection, demonstrating Calder's unique vision, one that stands apart in the history of modern art and has had a profound influence on contemporary culture. The publication features a curatorial foreword by Jose Diaz, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art at SAM; short essays by Jon Shirley in which he traces his evolution as a passionate and informed collector of Calder's work and discusses the importance of scale in the artist's sculpture, which ranges from the miniature to the monumental; an essay by the art historian Elizabeth Hutton Turner that expands on the life of the artist and his extraordinary impact on twentieth-century art; and short texts by Alexander S. C. Rower, president of the Calder Foundation and grandson of the artist, that focus on ten of the artworks in the collection, situating them within Calder's oeuvre. This richly illustrated volume includes full-color plates of each artwork in the Shirley Family Collection"--