La Grande Vitesse, Grand Rapids, Guide du visiteur et quoi faire à proximité

La Grande Vitesse is a large red-orange steel sculpture by the American artist Alexander Calder, standing in Calder Plaza in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. Installed in 1969, it is a stabile, a fixed sculpture rather than a moving mobile, and it became one of the best-known symbols of the city.

The story behind it

Calder was already famous for his mobiles and stabiles when Grand Rapids commissioned this work for the plaza in front of its new civic buildings. The project was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, and it is often described as one of the first major public artworks the agency helped fund. The title is French for "great speed".

Not everyone loved it at first. A big abstract sculpture in the middle of a Midwestern city sparked plenty of debate. Over the years the mood shifted, and the sculpture was adopted as a symbol of Grand Rapids. It appears on city materials, and the plaza around it is now called Calder Plaza.

What to look for

• Walk all the way around it, because the curving steel plates change shape from every side, and from some angles it looks like an arch.
• Notice the bold red-orange colour against the glass and concrete of the buildings around the plaza and, on a clear day, against the sky.
• Stand close and look up through the openings in the sculpture to see how the plates and ribs are joined together.
• Look at the plaza itself, a wide open civic space that frames the sculpture and lets you see it from a distance.

Tips for your visit

• It stands outdoors in a public plaza, so you can see it any time and there is no ticket or entry. You cannot go inside it, but you can walk right up to it.
• Ten to twenty minutes is plenty for the sculpture, longer if you want to photograph it from several sides.
• Morning and late afternoon light bring out the colour and give softer shadows for photos.
• Rosa Parks Circle and the Grand Rapids Art Museum are a short walk away, so it fits easily into a wider stroll downtown. Check current opening hours for any museum you want to enter.

See it on a quest

Murder Mystery: Death in the Shadows in Grand Rapids passes La Grande Vitesse, so you reach the sculpture on foot as one stop of a longer route through downtown. The app tells you about each place as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle right where you are standing, which gives you a reason to look closely at the sculpture and its surroundings. It is a paid quest, and one ticket covers the whole group. You can start any time, with no guide and no group to join.