Theaster Gates, Edmund de Waal, and Hanya Yanagihara named 2023 Isamu Noguchi Award winners

De Waal added: “I’m truly honored to be receiving the Isamu Noguchi Award. Noguchi has been a constant presence in my life since I first went to Japan over forty years ago. I was a pilgrim to the many places in which he worked and since then feel that I have traveled in his footsteps. His relationship with the materials of clay and stone and his sense of place have informed and delighted me. Noguchi’s encounters with traditional skills were respectful: He took them seriously enough to change and renew them with vigor. I am a potter, I work with the oldest craft in the world, and I try to renew my art in a similar way.”

Hanya Yanagihara shared: “It’s a profound honor to receive this Award, particularly as I’ve long been inspired by Noguchi’s work as both an artist and a politically engaged citizen. I’ve always admired how his dedication to craft intersected with his sense of cultural and personal responsibility, in a way that had real consequences for him. As an East Coast-based Japanese American resident, he was exempted from Executive Order 9066, which placed over 120,000 Japanese Americans — most of them American citizens — in prison camps. But in 1942, he voluntarily committed himself to one of those camps, Poston, with idealistic hopes of creating a more humane environment.”

Each recipient will be honored on Tuesday, September 12th, at a special benefit gala held at the museum's Long Island City location.