7 February: The Calders attend the premiere of Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts, which is set to music by Virgil Thomson and performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Afterward, they attend dinner at the home of A. Everett "Chick" Austin, Jr., director of the Atheneum, where they meet with old friends, including Thomson and Julien Levy, and new acquaintances such as James Thrall Soby. (Calder 1966, 146)

March: "The First Municipal Art Exhibition," Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, New York, includes two works by Calder, a gouache titled Abstraction, and the motorized mobile A Universe. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchases A Universe for his institution. (CF, exhibition file; Calder 1966, 148)

6-28 April: "Mobiles by Alexander Calder" is presented at Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. James Johnson Sweeney writes the preface for the catalogue: The evolution of Calder's work epitomizes the evolution of plastic art in the present century. Out of a tradition of naturalistic representation, it has worked by a simplification of expressional means to a plastic concept which leans on the shapes of the natural world only as a source from which to abstract the elements of form. (Calder 1966, 148; CF, exhibition file)

Summer: In Roxbury, Calder works prolifically on "panels" and "frames"; these sculptures consist of moving abstract forms set in front of colored plywood panels or within boxlike frames. The works relate to the idea of three-dimensional paintings in motion that Calder proposed to Mondrian during his 1930 visit. (Sweeney 1951, 38; CF, object files)

Before 20 September: Calder takes Louisa to stay with her parents in Concord during her pregnancy. (Calder 1966, 150; JJS, Calder to Sweeney, 20 September)

Winter: The Calders spend the winter in an apartment at Eighty-sixth Street and Second Avenue, New York. Calder rents a small store and converts it into a studio. (Calder 1966, 156)

14-31 January: "Mobiles by Alexander Calder" is held at The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago; Sweeney writes the preface for the catalogue. On 16 and 19 of January, Calder gives performances of Cirque Calder in the University of Chicago's Weiboldt Hall for the Renaissance Society. He also performs at the home of Walter S. Brewster, a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, on 20 January. (Calder 1966, 153; CF, exhibition file; Cass, "Dinner Party")

1-26 February: The Arts Club of Chicago presents "Mobiles by Alexander Calder." (CF, exhibition file)

After February: Calder offers Sweeney a sculpture from his first show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, for which Sweeney had written an introduction to the catalogue. Sweeney chooses Object with Red Discs; on principle, he insists that Calder accept a small sum in return for the sculpture. The Sweeney family enjoys the object immensely and Sweeney's brother, John, dubs it "Calderberry-bush." (Calder 1966, 148; ASCR, conversation with Sean Sweeney, 22 July 1997)

Spring: While traveling home from Chicago, Calder stops in Rochester, New York, to see Charlotte Whitney Allen, who commissions a standing mobile for her garden, which had been designed by landscape architect Fletcher Steele. (Calder 1966, 153-154)