‘Noguchi’s New York’ at the Noguchi Museum

‘Noguchi’s New York’ traces the artist’s longstanding relationship with New York, a city he first moved to in 1922 and which remained his on-again, off-again home until his death in 1988. The exhibition explores how New York’s material, cultural, social and political landscape shaped his artistic practice and way of thinking, and how he in turn shaped the city.

Presenting more than 50 works, ‘Noguchi’s New York’ features a selection of sculptures, project models, photographs and archival materials. It also revisits Noguchi’s proposals for unrealised playgrounds and playground equipment through a series of animated films by Jack Cunningham and Nicolas Ménard of Eastend Western.

‘Like a lot of New Yorkers, I was one of those bitten by some kind of an idealism … New Yorkers after all felt a special relationship to the world. They were on this island looking out on the whole damn world, which they had to do something about. My way was not the way of words, but the way of doing things, making something which might sort of approach that which one felt the world could be. Little spots here and there, so that instead of going to the moon, you bring the moon to you.’ – Isamu Noguchi (1980)