Archinect - News

Noguchi Museum appoints long-time staffer Amy Hau as its next director

2023-12-15T12:56:00-05:00

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum has announced the appointment of Amy Hau as its next Director.

The appointment continues a more than thirty-year working relationship that first began in 1986 when Hau was hired as an assistant at the then one-year-old Long Island City, Queens institution.

Hau left the museum in 2015 to serve as the Managing Principal of New York’s WXY Architecture + Urban Design. Before that time, she had been credited with overseeing a restorative $23 million capital campaign and the development of a new master plan for the campus. Hau has held titles including Administrative Director, Assistant to the Executive Director, and Assistant to Isamu Noguchi during her first tenure and will lean on additional experience on Queens' Community Board 1 and several other local cultural groups in the execution of her new duties.

“Amy represents not only the profound legacy of the Museum but also embodies its dynamic, polyvocal future,” Spencer Bailey, the museum...

$4.5 million will open Isamu Noguchi’s private studio for the first time

2022-08-23T13:04:00-04:00

A recent $4.5 million capital grant from New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs will open the former studio of legendary sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi to the public for the first time, according to The Art Newspaper.

The 3,200-square-foot, 60-year-old warehouse space is located across the street from the eponymous museum in Long Island City, Queens, and served as his private workshop and pied-à-terre for many years following a move from Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in 1961.

Noguchi at the museum in 1985. Image © David Finn courtesy of National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC.

The Museum’s Director, Brett Littman, says it was “the center of his artistic practice in New York for nearly three decades.” The space was eventually retrofitted by Noguchi collaborator Yukio Madokoro to include a living room, sleeping area, and kitchen space separated by concrete blocks and fiberglass Shoji screens. Noguchi used the studio until his death in 1988.

Previously on Archinec...

The 2020 Isamu Noguchi Award goes to Sir David Adjaye and Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang

2020-02-21T15:31:00-05:00

Acclaimed Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye and noted Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang have been named as the 2020 Isamu Noguchi Award winners by the Isamu Noguchi Museum in New York City. Both have made several impacts in their respective industries as well as throughout the design world.

Each year, the award is presented to individuals who embody global consciousness, design innovation, and emphasis on cultural exchanges between Eastern and Western cultures. Similar to Noguchi and his dedication to innovation and cultural awareness, Adjaye and Cai have used their multi-disciplinary talents to create new ways for contemporary social issues to be presented within the built environment and design.

Explosion still from Ninth Wave Exhibition Event. Image courtesy of Cai Studio/Netflix/photographer Lin Yi.

Having both received many honors and accolades celebrating their work, Cai is most recognized for innovative exhibitions that incorporate gunpowder to explosive effects. His mes...

Digitized Isamu Noguchi archives are now available online

2019-11-27T15:00:00-05:00

Noguchi heads rejoice! The archives of Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi have been digitized and made available to the public via a online archive and portal.

Hyperallergic reports that the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York has made 60,000 archival items, including 28,000 photographs, as well as letters, architectural drawings, plans, and other items, available for public viewing on its website, which is being optimized for easy research use through the addition of research texts and other materials that are generated through the use of the archives. The archive is made possible by a collaboration between the Noguchi Museum and Catalogue Raisonné.

The trove includes items spanning the artist's nearly 70-year-long career that convey Noguchi's multi-medium virtuosity as well as the changing styles and approaches to design and art that took shape throughout the 20th century. The latest updates to the site focus on Noguchi's earliest works, which date to the 1920s and 1930s.

A ch...

John Pawson and Hiroshi Senju named 2017 Isamu Noguchi Award recipients

2017-04-04T14:21:00-04:00

The Isamu Noguchi Museum announced London-based architect John Pawson and Japanese-born painter Hiroshi Senju as the 2017 recipients of the honorable Isamu Noguchi Award, which recognizes individuals whose work embodies the collaborative, multi-disciplinary, and cross-cultural qualities of influential landscape architect and artist Isamu Noguchi.

First awarded to Norman Foster and artist Hiroshi Sugimoto in 2014, previous recipients of the award also include architect Yoshio Taniguchi and industrial designer Jasper Morrison (2015) and Tadao Ando and Elyn Zimmerman (2016).

Learn more about the 2017 recipients on Bustler.

Tadao Ando and Elyn Zimmerman win the 2016 Isamu Noguchi Award

2015-12-02T14:49:00-05:00

The Noguchi Museum in New York announced the one and only Tadao Ando and artist Elyn Zimmerman as the 2016 recipients of the Isamu Noguchi Award. Established in 2014, the award recognizes individuals whose work conveys collaborative, multi-disciplinary, and innovative qualities like that of influential landscape architect and artist Isamu Noguchi. In the last two editions, Norman Foster and artist Hiroshi Sugimoto won the inaugural award, while architect Yoshio Taniguchi and industrial designer Jasper Morrison received the 2015 award earlier this year.

During a special ceremony at the Museum's Spring Benefit on May 10, 2016, Ando and Zimmerman will each be presented with the award — which resembles Noguchi's iconic "Red Cube" sculpture. The Museum selected Ando for his masterful "minimalist approach, sensitivity to light, and incorporation of natural elements" that he is widely known for. Zimmerman, who started out as a painter and photographer, was recognized for her signature use...

Yoshio Taniguchi + Jasper Morrison to receive 2nd Isamu Noguchi Award

2014-12-02T18:35:00-05:00

Architect Yoshio Taniguchi and industrial designer Jasper Morrison are the recipients of the second annual Isamu Noguchi Award. The Isamu Noguchi Award recognizes individuals whose work represents the collaborative and multi-disciplinary qualities of landscape architect and artist Isamu Noguchi. Morrison and Taniguchi will be presented with the award by Motohide Yoshikawa (Ambassador of Japan to the U.N.) during a ceremony at The Noguchi Museum's Spring Benefit on May 19, 2015.

Learn more about the recipients on Bustler.

Norman Foster as one of the first recipients to receive Isamu Noguchi Award

2014-04-29T15:44:00-04:00

Esteemed English architect Norman Foster and contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto will be honored with the inaugural Isamu Noguchi Award this May. The award acknowledges individuals whose work relates to renowned landscape architect and artist Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi's work exhibited a multi-disciplinary, collaborative approach to the arts as well as promoted the value of innovation, global consciousness, and Japanese/American exchange.

Norman Foster and Hiroshi Sugimoto will formally accept the award during the Noguchi Museum's Spring Benefit on May 13 in New York, NY.

"The evening will include a silent auction of a black and white photograph from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s series titled “Conceptual Forms.” He created this series as a response to "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)" by Marcel Duchamp.

'These machines and models were created without any artistic intention. This is what motivated me to produce this series of photographs and title them 'Conceptual Forms.' Art is possible without artistic intention and can be better without It.' - Hiroshi Sugimoto"

For further event info, click here.