noguchi museum — november 17, 2010 – april 24, 2011, new york. left: noguchi chart of influences. click photo to enlarge.

A new show celebrating 25 years of the wonderful Noguchi Museum and Garden in Long Island City, Queens, is called “On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and His Contemporaries, 1922–1960.” It could  have been called Six Degrees of Isamu Noguchi or Linked-in, featuring Isama Noguchi. It even comes with a wall-sized flow chart of connections. Some of the connected names are Bucky Fuller, Alexander Calder, Frieda Kahlo, Martha Graham, George Balanchine.

Noguchi also planned a swimming pool for director Josef Von Sternberg, at his house by Richard Neutra. (It was never built but imagine Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper paddling around together.) He did a bust of Ginger Rogers. More than a sculptor, he was a designer of furniture and lamps for Herman Miller, Knoll and others. He shaped public spaces and playgrounds. He worked with leading artists, designers and architects.



above: my arizona 1943
In 1943 in a wartime internment camp for Japanese Americans he wrote letters to friends like Man Ray and created “My  Arizona” a wall sculpture of fiberglass and plastic commenting on the desert village where he lived out the war.

[ noguchi museum—november 17, 2010 – april 24, 2011 ]

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