Futura Akari Limited Editions

With the release of two limited edition series of Akari lanterns and prints hand-painted by FUTURA2000, The Noguchi Museum is delighted to continue a collaboration that began in 2020 with the exhibition Futura Akari. 

In August 2021, in Isamu Noguchi’s former studio located across the street from The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens, Leonard McGurr (FUTURA2000) hand-painted a series of Akari 1A, all of which feature designs by Noguchi screenprinted in yellow, orange, red, green, and grey colorways; and a series of hand-paintings on screenprints featuring surface designs for Akari. The two Akari print designs were created by Noguchi in different colorways for the Akari 1A beginning around 1954. The Akari prints are screenprinted in Japan on washi paper.

The Noguchi Museum is grateful to McGurr for this ongoing collaboration, and for his generosity in joining us to make these unique editions available to support the Museum and its programming. If you are interested in receiving more information, please contact futuraeditions@noguchi.org.

Each lamp and print is hand-painted and unique. A certificate of authenticity is included.

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About FUTURA2000

FUTURA2000 (b. Leonard Hilton McGurr, 1955, New York) is an abstract painter whose practice first developed in New York during the 1970s. One of the earliest graffiti artists to introduce abstraction into his work, FUTURA2000 was also among the first graffiti artists to be shown in contemporary art galleries in the early 1980s. 

Early exhibitions of his work include presentations at Patti Astor’s Fun Gallery and Tony Shafrazi Gallery, as well as within the historic Times Square show of 1980, alongside Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rammellzee, and Kenny Scharf. MoMA PS1 brought the artists together again in its landmark 1981 exhibition, New York / New Wave. FUTURA2000 collaborated with the punk band The Clash during this time as well, designing their album art and painting on large-scale canvases behind the band as they performed in concert. In recent years, he created collaborative works with Takashi Murakami and exhibited at Kaikai KiKi Gallery in Tokyo. He worked with Virgil Abloh on collections for Off-White and Louis Vuitton and stage visuals for the designer at Coachella. 

FUTURA2000’s work has been shown at The New Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands; and Yvon Lambert, Galerie De Noirmont, and the galerie du jour agnès b., Paris. In 2020, The Noguchi Museum presented Futura Akari, an installation of Akari light sculptures customized by FUTURA2000; he created a large site-specific installation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; and he was included in the exhibition Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip Hop Generation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.