A coat of many colors

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Huh? What's going on here?
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"Homage to Jerusalem - Stabile" was the last statue planned by the famous American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and was installed in Jerusalem, on Mt. Herzl, in 1977.

Three years ago it had to be moved because an underground parking lot for Jerusalem's still under-construction tram line had to be built just there. Now it has been returned. To see slides on how the 65-ton metal statue was transported click here.

The by-now rusty looking metal was supposed to be restored to its original bright color with "Calder Red" paint, especially ordered from abroad. So what's with this white paint?? Is it some kind of Grundfarbe (base coat?)?
It looks funny. You can even see it from my house, across the valley, sticking out like a sore thumb on Mt. Herzl.

Calder was a mechanical engineer [as is my dear daughter, who also carries the artistic gene].
He pioneered the stabile, an abstract construction that is completely stationary. His examples were termed stabiles to distinguish them from mobiles, their moving counterparts, also invented by Calder.

In a catalogue essay Marc Glimcher writes that “Calder's invention of the stabile set the stage for a major revolution. The nature of his compositions along with the materials and construction allowed the idea of abstraction to expand beyond the gallery, the studio or the museum and spill out onto city streets… This unprecedented accomplishment simultaneously restored the place of monumental, public art and claimed it for abstraction. Scores of artists in the following generations have taken up the challenge of monumental abstraction, and in doing so have generated many of the ground-breaking developments seen in the last forty years of contemporary sculpture.”