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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...

Theaster Gates and other 2023 Noguchi award winners reflect on his influence

2023-07-03T18:59:00-04:00

Theaster Gates and his fellow cohort of 2023 Isamu Noguchi Award winners recently gave an interview to Art Basel’s online publication in order to provide depth and detail as to the aspects of the storied artist's work that has propelled them creatively in their various endeavors.

The 49-year-old pioneer of social practice expanded on comments he made after the announcement, where he called the Award “one of the highest honors I could receive.” He pointed to a lecture given by Martin Puryear at the Art Institute of Chicago as sparking his interest in Noguchi, before quipping that Noguchi's designs, much like his own work, offered the world "excellent craftsmanship; values rooted in animistic philosophies that understand that the spiritual life within things should be respected and protected; and a conviction that the public deserves exceptionally made things.

“What moved me so deeply was that Noguchi was not afraid to scale ideas and the language of his work was rooted between natur...

$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 2021 Isamu Noguchi Award goes to artist Shio Kusaka and architect Toshiko Mori

2021-08-24T15:14:00-04:00

Each year, the Isamu Noguchi Award honors and recognizes the work of individuals who "embody global consciousness, design innovation, and emphasis on cultural exchanges between Eastern and Western cultures." This year's 2021 award will be presented to artist Shio Kusaka and architect Toshiko Mori.

Both women, born in Japan and practicing in the United States, have had illustrious careers where their work and contribution to art, design, and architecture positions them as leaders in their respective fields.

Artist Shio Kusaka

Ceramic work by Shio Kusaka. Image courtesy of Shio Kusaka (via @kusakashio)

A row of Shio Kusaka's ceramic animals on top of the built-in bookcase at the Richard Neutra-designed VDL House in Los Angeles. Image courtesy of Shio Kusaka (@kusakashio)

Born in Morioka, Japan, Kusaka received her BFA from the University of Washington, Seattle, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work focuses on innovative and gracefully playful approaches to the ceramic medium. ...

Hidden Noguchi ceiling found at a U-Haul St. Louis store

2020-08-06T15:52:00-04:00

An undulating lobby ceiling that Isamu Noguchi sculpted in the 1940s has emerged at a U-Haul branch in St. Louis, two decades after it was hidden by partitions and dropped ceiling panels. Noguchi designed the feature, known as a lunar landscape, for the building’s original owner, the American Stove Company.

The ceiling was discovered back in 2015 and immediately many began to advocate for its preservation. The New York Times reports David Conradsen, the St. Louis Museum of Art's decorative arts and design curator said that experts had contemplated removing the sculpture to transfer it to the museum, but concluded that it would be destroyed in the removal process.

Rare Isamu Noguchi ceiling installation in New York City is threatened

2020-02-26T14:28:00-05:00

The Museum of Modern Art collects and prizes the sculpture and designs of Isamu Noguchi, a towering figure in 20th-century American art. But just across West 53rd Street, the developer of 666 Fifth Avenue, Brookfield Properties, is planning the opposite: dismantling one of Noguchi’s largest sculptural installations, one that he called “a landscape of clouds” that he designed in 1957 in the skyscraper’s twin lobbies.

Writing in The New York Times, Joseph Giovannini looks into the uncertain fate facing a "landscape of clouds" designed by noted sculptor Isamu Noguchi for the lobby of a 41-story skyscraper that is undergoing a renovation from Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. Preservation groups, including Docomomo and the Isamu Noguchi Museum, have voiced concern over the proposed lobby renovations and are fighting to have the installation preserved in-situ.

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...

R.I.P. Shoji Sadao, the unsung force behind some of Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi's iconic designs

2019-11-15T12:42:00-05:00

“Shoji’s architectural background was instrumental to these large projects,” Thomas T.K. Zung, who became a partner of Mr. Sadao’s in the firm Buckminster Fuller, Sadao & Zung Architects, said by email. “Shoji’s accomplishment was his service to two geniuses, Bucky and Isamu,” Mr. Zung added. “Shoji was an architectural samurai — he understood them both and added to their mix, without need or benefit of self-glory.”

Architect Shoji Sadao, who played a major role in bringing some of the most famous designs by Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi into the world, passed away in Tokyo at the age of 92 on November 3.

As one of Fuller's most important collaborators, Sadao applied his mathematical and cartographic expertise for iconic projects like the Dymaxion Airocean World Map and the U.S. pavilion geodesic dome at Expo ’67. Some of the projects he worked on with Noguchi include the Hart Plaza fountain in Detroit and the production of the well-known Akari Light Sculpture. He led the design of the Noguchi Museum in Queens, for which he served as Executive Director from 1989-2003.

In 2006, Sadao authored the book, “Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi: Best of Friends,” an informal biography of the lasting friendship and shared influences between the two visionaries.

“During his life, Shoji was modest and reserved, keeping his name out of the limelight,” the Buckminster Fuller Institute wrote in an o...

Denver Art Museum delves into the "Serious Play" behind Mid-Century Modernism

2019-07-09T11:00:00-04:00

Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America, an exhibition currently on view at the Denver Art Museum (DAM), delves into some of the more joyful aspects of 20th Century design.

Highlighting works by Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, Henry P. Glass, Herbert Bayer, Eva Zeisel, and Alexander Girard, among others, the colorful and whimsical exhibition seeks to position play as a primary "catalyst for creativity and innovation," according to a press release.

Armchair for Braniff International by Alexander Girard. Image courtesy of Wright.

The exhibition, co-organized with the Milwaukee Art Museum, is co-curated by Christoph Heinrich, director of DAM, Darrin Alfred, curator of architecture and design at DAM, and Monica Obniski, curator of 20th and 21st Century design at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Presenting over 200 design objects, including drawings, models, textiles, ceramics, playground equipment, and furniture, the exhibition argues that during the Mid-Century era, material innova...

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.

Arts & Architecture, 1945-54: The Complete Reprint

2009-01-02T12:19:00-05:00

The LA Times' Greg Goldin reviews the recently released Arts & Architecture, 1945-54: The Complete Reprint

Arts & Architecture, which folded 41 years ago, is the most influential architecture magazine ever published. During the height of its run, from 1945 to 1967, it convinced the world that Los Angeles was at the vanguard of reinventing the single family home. John Entenza, the editor, quietly featured the work of Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, Richard Neutra, George Nelson, Charles Eames, George Nakashima and Bernard Rudofsky.