Restorer Franz Ostermaier worked at the BMW Classic Center in Munich, comparing the Calder art car to the copy. Rower approached him about making a precise copy. Rower reached out to BMW and connected with Thomas Girst, global head of cultural engagement, who oversees the BMW’s Art Car program. “I made all these rookie mistakes looking for the wrong thing.” It took a couple years until his car collector friend Bob Rubin helped him find one in Sweden, and in 2018 he bought the car. He set about tracking down an identical 3.0 CSL. He says he’s in the market for a 1930 LaSalle, like the car his grandparents drove around the Calder studio in Connecticut. “Thus, I’m not a car guy.”) He owns a green 1958 Jaguar XK, a Citroen DS station wagon, and a Deux Chevaux. (“This is my definition: I don’t own a spark-plug wrench,” he says. Rower doesn’t define himself as a car enthusiast, but he has a penchant for delightful classics. The finished replica Rower worked with BMW to build. “They’re never going to drop in an M49 engine in a car and let somebody tear it around the track.” “I started to think it would be kind of amazing if we had Calder’s car and we could lend it to exhibitions and activate it, have the engine have the fierce roar, because the one in Munich doesn’t have an operable engine,” Rower says. As the years passed, the foundation received plenty of requests for the car. But he never forgot about that day at the Whitney. In 1987, he founded the Calder Foundation and has organized countless exhibitions of his grandfather’s work while organizing the archives for curatorial scholarship. Rower eventually became the steward of his grandfather’s legacy. It didn’t say Braniff anywhere on it and had Calder’s name over the door.” The buzz attracted BMW’s attention. “I mean, this was before airplanes were painted. “It got a huge amount of attention,” Rower says. “Flying Colors of South America,” as it was known, was showcased at the Paris Air Show in 1975. In 1973, Braniff International Airways commissioned him to paint a plane. He also wanted to push his work out to the masses. Much of his work was about motion, embodied by his mobiles.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Norman Mailer, and John Cage helped celebrate the opening of the Whitney’s exhibit. “More than any other American artist, Calder penetrated the awareness of the public at large,” the New York Times wrote in his obituary. Then, two weeks later his grandfather died. Technically, the car belonged to BMW’s collection, but that long ago day Calder assured his grandson that he intended to make an exact copy of the car the kid could one day drive. Like, whatever is needed, but not anything extra.” “The fact that there’s no like vinyl interior inside the doors. “There I am with my grandfather, standing next to this car, and it’s like totally awesome,” says Rower, who goes by Sandy. Alexander Calder with Hervé Poulain in 1975.
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