The Noguchi Museum

Founded and designed in 1985 by Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), and committed to advancing the understanding and appreciation of his art and legacy. Long Island City, NYC. Posts by Matthew Kirsch, Curator of Research. noguchi.org

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Isamu Noguchi, The Inhabitant, 1962-63, bronze, aluminum

Photo: Akira Takahashi

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Remembering Sono Osato, dancer, actor, and philanthropist (August 29, 1919–December 26, 2018). Born in Omaha to a Japanese father and French-Irish mother, Osato became at 14 the youngest member of the renowned Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and the first of Japanese American descent, and went on to perform with the Ballet Theater in New York and on Broadway. Isamu Noguchi sculpted a portrait of the rising star in 1940. Read more about her life in the @nytimes. — Eliot Elisofon, Portrait of Sono Osato with Isamu Noguchi and ‘Sono Osato,’ 1940, plaster. Photograph in the #NoguchiArchives. ©The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images / The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS).

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Isamu Noguchi, Leda, 1942, alabaster

Photo: Kevin Noble

The Noguchi Museum

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Isamu Noguchi’s ceiling for the American Stove Company building, 1948, interior design with plaster, colored glass, electric components (St. Louis, MO; Harris Armstrong, architect)

Unknown photographer

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Isamu Noguchi, model for unrealized design for U.S. Pavilion at Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan, 1968, painted plaster, wire, paint

Photos by Kevin Noble

The Noguchi Museum

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Photo of Isamu Noguchi’s granite sculptures Ground Wind # 2 (1969, foreground) and Another Land (1968) at his studio in Mure, Shikoku, Japan, ca. 1970s

Unknown photographer

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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(Above) 

Isamu Noguchi guiding the placement of elements in one of two gardens he designed for IBM Headquarters, Armonk, NY, c. 1964 

(Below)

Isamu Noguchi’s “Garden of the past,” IBM Headquarters, Armonk, NY, 1964

Photos by Minoru Niizuma

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Photograph by Isamu Noguchi of a friend viewing a grasshopper atop a wooden finial, unknown temple, Japan, c. 1950s. 

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Detail photograph by Isamu Noguchi of his sculpture Student, then installed at his combination indoor/ outdoor space Shin Banraisha, Keio University, Tokyo, c. 1951

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Photograph by Isamu Noguchi of the Lord Vishnu sculpture, Budhanilkantha Temple, Kathmandu, Nepal, 1956

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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(top)

Isamu Noguchi’s preparatory model for his Constellation (for Louis Kahn) for the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1982, plasticine and plywood 

Photo: Galerie Maeght

 (bottom)

Isamu Noguchi, Constellation (for Louis Kahn), 1982, Site-specific grouping of four basalt elements

Photo: Kimbell Art Museum

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Isamu Noguchi, model for unrealized design for playground for United Nations, New York, 1952, plaster

Photo: Charles Uht

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Isamu Noguchi, Untitled, 1972, serpentine, marble

Photo: Wernher Krutein

The Noguchi Museum

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Photographs of Tsukuba granite elements and plantings from Isamu Noguchi’s collaboration with Skidmore Owings & Merrill at First National City Bank Plaza, Fort Worth, Texas, soon after its completion, 1961.

Unknown photographer (possibly Noguchi’s own)

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Isamu Noguchi, Shinto, 1974-75, aluminum (now destroyed)

Commissioned by Bank of Tokyo for its renovated lobby in Manhattan’s Financial District, Noguchi’s Shinto was intended to act as a counterpoint to the Corinthian columns it was suspended between, left intact from the original space by the architects. Unfortunately the looming 17 foot tall form was claimed to have intimidated customers and Bank of Tokyo dismantled and removed it in 1980. Noguchi only learned of its removal after the fact. 

Photo by Ezra Stoller / ESTO

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Photograph by Isamu Noguchi of his work Apartment (1952, unglazed Seto stoneware) soon after its completion.

(now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art) 

The Noguchi Museum Archive

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Photograph by Isamu Noguchi of his ceramics being removed from a kiln (with the multi- element Even the Centipede on the plank in the foreground), Japan, 1952

The Noguchi Museum Archive