CAW 37-foot kinetic blackbird sculpture Central Library

Austin, Texas, United States

Public art

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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Caw is a 37-foot-tall kinetic sculpture by Christian Moeller in the atrium of Austin Central Library, resembling a giant cuckoo clock overtaken by blackbirds. A companion screen on the fifth floor shows an animated bird.

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CAW 37-foot kinetic blackbird sculpture Central Library

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Site-level location · 30.2637° N, 97.7532° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A giant cuckoo clock that does not tell the time, covered in blackbirds, hangs in the atrium of Austin's Central Library.

Caw is a 37-foot-tall kinetic work by the artist Christian Moeller. His own page dates it to 2017 and lists aluminium with an electric drive, 37 feet high and 15 feet 8 inches wide. The Austin Public Library describes the red sculpture as having a swinging pendulum, and says that although it is referred to as a clock, it is an art piece and does not tell time. It was commissioned through the City of Austin's Art in Public Places programme.

Tribeza reported that the motor, visible from the side, was built in Germany by one of the world's oldest clock-making firms. Tribeza described the pendulum's motion as gentle.

The birds come from Austin itself. The library quotes Moeller as saying he was struck by the city's great-tailed grackles, birds with a "unique kind of attitude towards their human co-habitants". The City of Austin says the work also draws on the place of black birds in literature and mythology, citing the Greek myth of Apollo, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" and Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds".

A companion piece hangs on the fifth level: a round LED screen showing an artist-made blackbird in a Texas landscape. The city says the bird's behaviour is driven by a computer program rather than a video loop, with an external human sensor; Tribeza reported that a sensor in the frame sets the bird moving as people pass.

Caw is part of a public building, so it can be seen during the library's opening hours.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Caw hangs in the Central Library atrium, with a companion round LED screen on the fifth level. The library describes it as an art piece that does not tell time. It is inside a public library, so it can be seen during opening hours.

ACCESS

Austin Central Library, 710 W. César Chávez St., Austin, Texas. Caw hangs in the atrium and its companion screen is on the fifth floor; access follows the library's public opening hours.

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