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.

Regarding the archive, Museum Director Brett Littman explains via press release, “The materials that are now available to everyone with access to the internet manifest the protean, interdisciplinary nature of Noguchi’s work."

The collection includes photos of scale models depicting various iterations of Noguchi's oasis-like California Scenario garden from 1982 located at the Victor Gruen-designed South Coast Plaza mall, for example. Also included are photos of the lumpy Spirit of a Lima Bean sculpture from 1980 located nearby at the Pacific Arts Plaza. An original proposal from 1930 for Noguchi's spectacular monument to Benjamin Franklin is also included, as are sketch models, drawings, and final photos of the striking stainless steel sculpture, among the many other works on display.

Take a look for yourself and see what you find.