The Noguchi Museum
 




Noguchi ReINstalled
On View at the Noguchi Museum
June 17, 2009 – October 24, 2010

To formally commemorate the reopening of The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in its completely renovated state, the Museum will present Noguchi ReINstalled. While the Museum’s first floor galleries and indoor/outdoor space have remained relatively unchanged, this exhibition will mark the first time the Permanent Collection will be on view in its entirety since the spring of 2002. Through consultation of the Museum’s vast photographic archives, every effort will be made to present the collection as close to Noguchi’s original intentions as possible. By June 17, a number of objects loaned to exhibitions abroad will also be returned to their intended configuration in the Museum’s galleries and garden. A number of recent acquisitions to the Museum’s collections, including a recently fabricated model reproducing Noguchi’s ambitious design for the five-acre site at the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden in Jerusalem from 1960 – 1965 will also be on view.

Garden_Summer_Photo

California Scenario: The Courage of Imagination
On View at the Noguchi Museum
May 19 – October 24, 2010

In celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Noguchi’s landscape project California Scenario, located in Costa Mesa, California, the Noguchi Museum presents an exhibition documenting its conception and realization. Initially approached in 1980 to create a fountain for a corporate park by the developer Henry T. Segerstrom, Noguchi expanded the project to become one of his most fully-integrated landscape compositions. Inhabiting 1.6 acres, Noguchi’s vision of the highly diverse terrain of California, his birthplace, is achieved through seven large-scale sculptural elements as well as a careful selection of local flora whose steady growth has resulted in a presence equal to the corresponding manmade elements. The project will be represented by photographs, both old and new, video documentation, as well as a newly commissioned model that will be situated alongside the original plan by Noguchi.

California_Scenario

future
line

On Becoming An Artist: Isamu Noguchi and his Contemporaries, 1922 - 1960
November 17, 2010 – April 24, 2011


FROM PLASTER TO STONE
February 18, 2009 - May 31, 2009
Beginning in the 1940s, Isamu Noguchi began using small paper models as an aid in creating his larger biomorphic sculptures. Noguchi continued this practice for the rest of his career, using plaster maquettes to envision larger stone or metal works, often including penciled instructions on them to guide different technical effects. In this small exhibition created in conjunction with The Noguchi Museum’s Education Department, a selection of Noguchi’s maquettes is presented with photographs and finished sculptures to illustrate both Noguchi’s faithfulness to his original ideas and his flexibility in response to the unpredictable nature of stone.

Asian/ American/ Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970
February 18 – August 23, 2009 (Cancelled)
This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in association with the Asian American Art Project at Stanford University.

WHAT IS SCULPTURE? AKARI FROM THE 1986 VENICE BIENNALE
February 18, 2009 - May 31, 2009
When Isamu Noguchi was invited to represent the United States in the 1986 Venice Biennale, he juxtaposed stone sculpture with his Akari Light Sculptures to communicate his ideas on the reflexive relationship between the material he employed and his belief in the inner “essence” of sculpture. Noguchi had been experimenting with the conventional Japanese lamp’s mulberry paper and bamboo construction for over three decades, adapting its form to express the contrast between permanence and the transitory, between the traditional and modern invention, and between fine and functional art. Akari translates as “light as illumination”. For Noguchi, light acted as one aspect of the perception of space, and space was a central concern of his career. The Noguchi Museum will present a small but significant display of Noguchi’s Akari Light Sculptures, as they were featured in the American Pavilion at the 1986 Venice Biennale exhibition, with several one-of-a kind designs balanced by smaller, iconic forms that remain in production today.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE COLLECTION
February 18, 2009 - May 31, 2009
The Noguchi Museum presents a survey of over 20 works drawn from its collection, including a number of rarely seen sculptures. Objects representing many aspects of Noguchi’s career are installed in the second floor galleries, ranging from ceramics completed during Noguchi’s visits to Japan in the early 1950s to works from the last two decades of his life when he was increasingly dedicated to working with the natural properties of a variety of stones.

THE FULL FIGURE AND PORTRAITURE 1926-1941
February 13, 2008 - March 15, 2009
The Noguchi Museum exhibited a full figure bronze sculpture, entitled Undine (Nadja), in its first public exhibition since the 1920s. Isamu Noguchi’s unique vision emerged in response to the Western figurative traditions and techniques he experienced firsthand in the workshop of the sculptor Gutzon Borglum and through his mentor, Onorio Ruotolo. Organized around Undine, this exhibit also highlighted a selection of portrait busts from the permanent collection which illustrate Noguchi’s growing confidence owing to his formative academic training and a natural gift for incisive portraiture.

DESIGN: ISAMU NOGUCHI AND ISAMU KENMOCHI
September 20, 2007 - May 25, 2008
In 1950, Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi, who is credited with the invention of "Japanese Modern," worked together, developing a fruitful association and friendship that lasted until Kenmochi's death in 1971. This important exhibition explored their collaboration and its legacy with some eighty-five works borrowed from collections in Japan and the United States. Design: Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi illuminated the two men's shared interest in Japanese traditions of simplicity, craft, and functionality, and their commitment to combining these with experimental techniques and materials.

SURVEY OF PARIS ABSTRACTIONS
May 24, 2007 - August 26, 2007
This exhibition highlights the formal vocabulary of geometric abstraction that Noguchi first explored in 1928 after his apprenticeship to Constantine Brancusi.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION
May 24, 2007 - August 26, 2007
Some 250 works from the permanent collection of which include several new acquisitions are installed in the second floor galleries.

SHIN BANRAISHA: A Cultural Memory
November 1, 2006 - April 15, 2007
Approximately forty photographic panels document the creation and destruction of this collaboration between architect Yoshirō Taniguchi, interior designer Isamu Kenmochi, and Isamu Noguchi.

BEST OF FRIENDS: R. Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi
May 19, 2006 – October 15, 2006
Best of Friends: Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi, curated by Shoji Sadao, looks closely at the vital friendship and collaboration between Buckminster Fuller, an icon of modern creative and scientific thought, and Isamu Noguchi, one of the of twentieth century's most acclaimed sculptors and designers.


THE IMAGERY OF CHESS REVISITED

October 21, 2005 – April 16, 2006
Guest curated by Larry List, The Noguchi Museum recreates and expands the groundbreaking 1944 exhibition organized by Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst at the Julien Levy Gallery. In addition to Isamu Noguchi, the exhibition features original designs by artists such as Man Ray, Arshile Gorky and Yves Tanguy.

CHESS SET DESIGN COMPETITION PROTOTYPES
October 21, 2005 – April 16, 2006
Winning entries from The Noguchi Museum’s collegiate design competition will be exhibited in The Design Gallery during the run of The Imagery of Chess Revisited.

Highlights from the Permanent Collection
June 1, 2005 - September 10, 2005
Works from the permanent collection are reinstalled in the second floor galleries as originally conceived by Isamu Noguchi.

NOGUCHI'S COLLECTIBLES
June 1, 2005 - September 10, 2005
This installation at The Noguchi Museum displays a number of never before exhibited objects from Noguchi's personal collection, revealing his private sense of design, simplicity and its cultural basis. Noguchi's Collectibles presents a rare opportunity to better understand Noguchi's approach to sculpture and design.

NOGUCHI AND GRAHAM: Selected Works for Dance
December 2, 2004 - May 1, 2005
Noguchi and Graham: Selected Works for Dance includes nine of the nineteen dance sets Isamu Noguchi designed for Martha Graham, as well as supplementary footage of the dances being performed, archival photographs, and ephemera.

The Design Gallery
December 2, 2004 - May 1, 2005
The inaugural design gallery exhibit features never before seen collage studies for a theater curtain in Tokyo, unique and vintage table designs, as well as an early stand prototype for Akari lamps.

ISAMU NOGUCHI: Sculptural Design
Organized by the Vitra Design Museum, conceived and installed by Robert Wilson. June 12, 2004 through October 3, 2004

THE BOLLINGEN JOURNEY: Noguchi's Travels Through Photographs and Drawings 1949-51 February 13 through October 13, 2003
The Noguchi Museum - Sunnyside (Temporary location)

ZEN NO ZEN:Aspects of Noguchi's Sculptural Vision
February 23 through June 2, 2002
The Noguchi Museum - Sunnyside (Temporary location)

NOGUCHI: SCULPTURE AND NATURE Bringing the Garden into the Gallery
June 29, 2002 through January 13, 2003
The Noguchi Museum - Sunnyside (Temporary location)


The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860 - 1989
The Guggenheim Museum
New York City, USA
January 30, 2009 through April 19, 2009

This exhibition illuminates the dynamic and profound impact of Asian art and philosophical concepts on American artistic practices of the late 19th century, early modern, and postwar avant-garde periods. Accompanying The Third Mind, the Guggenheim Museum's Sackler Center for Arts Education will feature Noguchi: The Bollingen Journey 1949-56, an exhibition of selected photographs by Isamu Noguchi taken while traveling the world on a Bollingen Fellowship. This small exhibition will also include a limited-edition Ivory Press book, Isamu Noguchi, 18 Drawings and 18 Photographs, as well as a text by Pico Iyer. Both exhibitions will be on view at the Guggenheim through April 19, 2009.
For more information please visit www.guggenheim.org


Isamu Noguchi at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Yorkshire, England
July 2008 through February 22, 2009

The first major European exhibition of Isamu Noguchi’s work is presented at England’s Yorkshire Sculpture Park. With more than 150 sculptures, drawings, and dance and theater sets from The Noguchi Museum's collection, including five major sculptures from the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in Mure, Japan, the selection represents nearly every facet of Noguchi’s career. The work is situated throughout the YSP’s four indoor galleries, located within a pastoral environment of eighteenth-century parkland. Corresponding to Noguchi’s enduring interest in the interaction between art and landscape, some work is also sited outdoors, complementing the park’s permanently displayed sculptures and installations. For more information, please visit www.ysp.co.uk.


Metamorphosis in Clay: Noguchi in Kamakura
ICO Fundacion, Madrid
October 2006 through January 2007

Isamu Noguchi: Connecting the World Through Sculpture
Yokohama Museum of Art
April 2006 through June 2006

Shiga Prefectural Museum
July 2006 September 2006

Takamatsu Museum of Art
September 2006 through November 2006

Between Heaven and Earth
University of Central Florida

January 19, 2006 through March 6, 2006

Isamu Noguchi
The Museum of Contemporary Art Sapporo, Japan

July 2, 2005 through August 28, 2005

Isamu Noguchi
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan

September 16, 2005 - November 27, 2005

Isamu Noguchi: Sculptural Design
Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles

February 5, 2006 - May 14, 2006
Organized by the Vitra Design Museum

Isamu Noguchi: Sculptural Design
The Seattle Art Museum

June, 2005 - September, 2005
Organized by the Vitra Design Museum

Sculpture in Stone, Steel and Bronze
Lever House

February 2003 - 2006
Park Avenue between 52nd & 53rd Streets
1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York City

Noguchi: The Bollingen Journey
The Heckscher Museum of Art, Long Island, NY

August 20, 2005 - November 13, 2005
Organized by The Noguchi Museum

Noguchi: The Bollingen Journey
Bellingham University, WA

April, 2005 – June 12, 2005
Organized by The Noguchi Museum

Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

February 10, 2005 - May 8, 2005
Organized by The Whitney Museum of American Art and
The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
 

Museum Address: 9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, NY
Mailing Address: 32-37 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, NY 11106

Website © The Noguchi Museum. All Rights Reserved
Top   Home  Site Index