The Noguchi Museum - Past Events
Below is a list of all past events for The Noguchi Museum. Current and upcoming events, as well as other details, are available on the venue's page.
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“A Glorious Bewilderment: Marie Menken’s ‘Visual Variations on Noguchi’” Exhibition
Between 1945–46, the pioneering experimental filmmaker Marie Menken (1909–1970) made her first solo film: a four-minute, black-and-white work entitled Visual Variations on Noguchi. While alone in Isamu...More »
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“In Praise of Caves: Organic Architecture Projects from Mexico by Carlos Lazo, Mathias Goeritz, Juan O’Gorman, and Javier Senosiain”
In Praise of Caves: Organic Architecture Projects from Mexico by Carlos Lazo, Mathias Goeritz, Juan O’Gorman, and Javier Senosiain is an exhibition spanning multiple galleries on the Museum’s first floor....More »
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“Noguchi’s Memorials to the Atomic Dead” Exhibition
Noguchi’s Memorials to the Atomic Dead is occasioned by the return of Isamu Noguchi’s unrealized model for a cenotaph memorial, originally proposed in 1952 for Hiroshima Peace Park and re-envisioned in...More »
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“Noguchi: Useless Architecture” Exhibition
Noguchi: Useless Architecture is an exhibition of around fifty works mostly drawn from the Noguchi Museum’s collection and occupying its second floor galleries. In 1949 and again in 1960, Isamu Noguchi...More »
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Christian Boltanski “Animitas”
From May to September 2021, Christian Boltanski’s Animitas, a sound work consisting of 180 small bronze bells on steel stems, fills the Noguchi Museum’s garden with a “music of lost souls.” Boltanski’s...More »
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Koho Yamamoto “Under a Dark Moon”
The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum presents Koho Yamamoto: Under a Dark Moon, a one-gallery installation of ten untitled works on paper by Masako “Koho” Yamamoto (b. 1922). In the words...More »
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FUTURA2000 “Akari”
Occupying the Museum’s former Shop (which is temporarily relocated and expanded in the lower-level studio for social distancing), this installation presents a group of Akari light sculptures designed by...More »
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“The Sculptor and the Ashtray” Exhibition
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was profoundly in sync with America’s mid-century obsession with the power of design to shape the modern world. Dual exhibitions The Sculptor and the Ashtray and Composition for...More »
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“Composition for Idlewild Airport” Exhibition
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was profoundly in sync with America’s mid-century obsession with the power of design to shape the modern world. Dual exhibitions Composition for Idlewild Airport and The Sculptor...More »
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Brendan Fernandes “Contract and Release”
The Noguchi Museum’s collection installation Noguchi: Body-Space Devices—a group of about thirty works that motivate and modulate our physical understanding of space—is reconfigured as a set for Brendan...More »
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“Models for Spaces” Exhibition
Over the course of his career, Isamu Noguchi made, commissioned, and collaborated on dozens of models for actual and theoretical spaces. Models for Spaces, presented in Area 5 on the first floor, features...More »
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“Noguchi: Body-Space Devices” Exhibition
The first of a two-part exhibition with artist Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979), a dancer, choreographer, and sculptor, Noguchi: Body-Space Devices is an installation of works from the Museum’s collection. At...More »
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Jorge Palacios Exhibition
The Noguchi Museum presents an overview of the work of artist Jorge Palacios (b. 1979, Spain) with an exhibition of nine sculptures installed in the Museum’s galleries and garden. These works, which give...More »
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Miya Ando “Clouds”
The Noguchi Museum presents Miya Ando: Clouds, an installation of two site-specific sculptures in the Museum’s indoor-outdoor gallery. Ando’s works, suspended plate-glass sculptures internally etched with...More »
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“The Sculpture of Gonzalo Fonseca” Exhibition
The Noguchi Museum presents a retrospective exhibition of the sculptural work of Gonzalo Fonseca (1922–97), a major figure in the development of modern Latin American art who created some of the most enchanting...More »
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Robert Stadler “Solid Doubts”
Continuing the Museum’s collaboration with contemporary artists of all disciplines, the category-defying works of Robert Stadler (Austria, b. 1966) are installed in tandem with Noguchi’s sculptures, raising...More »
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“Self-Interned, 1942: Noguchi in Poston War Relocation Center” Exhibition
February 19, 2017, marks the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, the notorious wartime directive that authorized the internment of Japanese citizens and American citizens of Japanese heritage living...More »
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“Another Land: After Noguchi” Exhibition
Another Land: After Noguchi, an exhibition of six photographs by artist Leah Raintree, extends traditions of astrophotography and activates the other worlds inherent in Noguchi’s works, by reimagining...More »
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Tom Sachs “Tea Ceremony”
The Museum’s 30th-anniversary programming culminates with an installation by celebrated artist Tom Sachs. This major exhibition is the first at the Museum to present work by a single artist other than...More »
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Isamu Noguchi “Functional Ceramics”
In honor of Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, which will include a display of more than 300 of Sachs’ handmade porcelain chawan (tea bowls), the Museum will exhibit a selection of Noguchi’s more “functional” ceramics:...More »
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“Highlights from the Collection: Design Into Art” Exhibition
Long before it was widely accepted to do so, Noguchi ignored the traditional distinction between “art” and “design.” This exhibition focuses on the permeable membrane between these categories in Noguchi’s...More »
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“Museum of Stones” Exhibition
Think of a circumstance in which rock and water rub up against each other: in a river gorge, along a coast, where a gutter empties onto a flagstone, or rain falls regularly on a travertine wall. At any...More »
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“Editing Area 5: A Re-installation and Progressive De-installation of Noguchi’s Bronze Gallery” Exhibition
When the Museum first opened, Area 5 was a gallery featuring 1960s-era bronzes. This summer it will be installed as close as possible to its original state—before the elevator went in, when the space was...More »
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“NOGUCHI + PRATT” Exhibition
The Noguchi Museum will present a new exhibition of work by 30 graduate interior design students from Pratt Institute, a renowned New York City-based college that educates creative thinkers from around...More »
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“Highlights from the Collection: Iconic Display” Exhibition
As part of its ongoing series of installations from the collection, the Museum presents Iconic Display. Whether we realize it or not, and whether we consent to it or not, the contexts in which we encounter...More »
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“Noguchi as Photographer: The Jantar Mantars of Northern India” Exhibition
As part of his extended tour throughout Europe, Asia, and the Far East, Isamu Noguchi discovered the eighteenth-century astronomical observatories in Delhi and Jaipur known as Jantar Mantar. These...More »
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Isamu Noguchi “Patent Holder: Designing the World of Tomorrow”
The proverb “necessity is the mother of invention” comes to mind with regard to Isamu Noguchi’s involvement in industrial design beginning in the 1930s. Noguchi’s efforts as a designer—he even started...More »
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“Highlights from the Collection: Noguchi Archaic / Noguchi Modern” Exhibition
The only thing Noguchi loved more than the promise of the future was the sense of belonging to the Earth he derived from working with million and billion year old pieces of rock. Noguchi Archaic/ Noguchi...More »
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“Noguchi’s Early Drawings: 1927-1932” Exhibition
Reflecting in 1973 on his formative years as an artist, Noguchi remarked “I seem to have lost my facility but I was facile at drawing. I could do anything. It was easy for me.” Noguchi’s Early Drawings...More »
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“Noguchi- Pratt Fashion: What Inspires” Exhibition
In the fall of 2013, juniors in the Fashion Department at Pratt were introduced to Isamu Noguchi’s collaborations with the avant-garde dancer/choreographer Ruth Page, for whom he created two royal blue,...More »
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“Space, Choreographed: Noguchi and Ruth Page” Exhibition
Space, Choreographed: Noguchi and Ruth Page was developed in a collaboration between The Noguchi Museum and The Ruth Page Foundation, building on a group of drawings Noguchi made of the great American...More »
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“Isamu Noguchi and Qi Baishi: Beijing 1930” Exhibition
While en route to Japan for his first time since childhood, Isamu Noguchi paid an unexpected visit to Beijing (then called Peking) from July 1930 to January 1931. A fateful encounter with a Japanese businessman...More »
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“Highlights from the Collection: Reworked” Exhibition
This summer’s installation of highlights from the collection is organized around four instances in which Noguchi returned to an earlier body of work to rethink, redevelop, reproduce or restore it. The...More »
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“Highlights from the Collection: Recent Acquisitions” Exhibition
These pieces come from two major Japanese collections. Highlighted by the stunning “Love of Two Boards” is a major gift of works from Noguchi’s friend and collaborator, Tsutomu Hiroi, a famous kite-maker...More »
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“Area 5: Cut and Fold” Exhibition
Noguchi’s spatial intelligence (his ability to visualize in three dimensions) was extraordinary. He was capable not only of constructing an object composed of many elements in his mind, but rotating it...More »
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"Hammer, Chisel, Drill: Noguchi's Studio Practice" Exhibition
The exhibition will illuminate Noguchi's practice in six of the studios he used during the course of his career. These were located in Manhattan and Queens, New York; Querceta and Pietrasanta, Italy; and...More »
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"Highlights from the Collection" Exhibition
A newly-selected installment of the ongoing Highlights from the Collection series opens in June. This exhibition will feature key works from the Museum’s collection, including sculptures in stone, a selection...More »
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"Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City" Exhibition
Home to The Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park, the Queens community where northern Long Island City and Astoria converge is a textured, mixed industrial and residential community. A resident...More »
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"Tracks: Animal Drawings from Noguchi's Travels" Exhibition
Despite an enduring reputation as an artist interested in abstraction and spatial concerns, Noguchi avidly explored figuration and it informed much of his work. During his travels from the 1920s through...More »
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"Highlights from the Collection" Exhibition
Complimenting the Noguchi Museum's permanently installed lower levels, selections from the Museum's Collections, including examples of Noguchi's steel sculptures and a number of collaborative stage sets,...More »
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Isamu Noguchi "On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and His Contemporaries"
On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and His Contemporaries, 1922–1960 explores Isamu Noguchi’s influential friendships with such seminal figures as artists Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Stuart...More »
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"California Scenario: The Courage of Imagination" Exhibition
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....More »
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Isamu Noguchi "Noguchi ReINstalled"
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...More »
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"East and West: Between Past and Future" Talk
The writer, art critic, and Brooklyn Rail publisher Phong Bui will moderate this panel on the context and form of Asian American art in the 21st century. Robert C. Morgan, Yun-Fei Ji and Tomie Arai will...More »
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"From Plaster to Stone" Exhibition
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...More »
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"Highlights from the Collection" Exhibition
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...More »
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"What is Sculpture? Akari from the 1986 Venice Biennale" Exhibition
When Isamu Noguchi was invited to represent the United States in the 1986 Venice Biennale, he had been experimenting with the conventional Japanese lamp's mulberry paper and bamboo construction forms for...More »
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"The Second Sundays Series" Panel Discussion
This Sunday, January 11, the Museum will host a panel discussion focusing on the dynamic and changing nature of northern Long Island City. Donald Elliott, who held the position of New York City Planning...More »
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"Long Island City, The Northern Edge: Its Future" Panel Discussion
The Museum commences its 2009 series of Second Sundays programs with a panel discussion which will focus on the changing landscape of northern Long Island City. The panel will be moderated by Donald...More »
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"Highlights from the Collection" Exhibition
The Noguchi Museum presents a survey of over 50 works drawn from its collection, including a number of rarely seen sculptures, studies and models. Objects representing all aspects of Noguchi's career are...More »
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"The Full Figure and Portraiture 1926-1941" Exhibition
The Noguchi Museum exhibits 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...More »
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"Design: Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi" Exhibition
Isamu Kenmochi and Isamu Noguchi first met at the architect Kenzo Tange’s office at Tokyo University June 24th, 1950. From August of that same year, Noguchi spent approximately two weeks at the Industrial...More »