The Noguchi Museum Reopens
By Pamela A. Popeson
The Noguchi Museum, originally the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, reopened on June 12th following a two and a half year renovation. Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was born in Los Angeles, California to an American mother and Japanese father and lived in Japan until the ago of thirteen when he moved to Indiana. He started out studying pre-med but turned to sculpture in the 1920’s, and went on to develop a body of work that arguably establishes him as one of the most important sculptors of his time.
The museum, originally established and designed by Noguchi to house his work and archive, is located in a building across the street from where he has had his studio since 1961. While closed due to problems resulting from inadequate landfill issues and the East River rising up through the concrete foundation, the museum took the opportunity to restructure its gallery space and redefine its programming to include changing exhibits in the redesigned second floor galleries and rethink the permanent collection exhibition on the ground floor galleries and in the sculpture garden.
It no longer has the feel of an artist’s space. The old arrangement, with all manner of works strewn about, gave a sense of the artist’s process, an inside view on making art. You could follow his search or his course to work through or express an idea or set of ideas by getting to see several pieces that were sculpturally moving in the same direction; see the path or progression from realizing to realized.
The ground floor galleries are still dedicated to his works of stone, metal, clay and wood, and even if you no longer get the sense of Noguchi working and finding his way, you do get to witness his visionary genius. In his understanding of and affinity for his materials and his elemental understanding of objects and how form uses space, exists in space, he created work that transcends form, transcends matter. As a sculptor, Noguchi speaks an ephemeral truth that reaches far beyond the physical reality of the objects he made, their physical beauty notwithstanding.
"Isamu Noguchi: Sculptural Design," the inaugural temporary exhibit in the second floor galleries, focuses on Noguchi’s prolific body of work as a designer. Fittingly, the exhibit is designed by the theatrical designer Robert Wilson. When it comes to Noguchi’s design work, Wilson’s dramatic sensibility and love of theatrical elements is in perfect tune with Noguchi’s own design style.
In the first of the four galleries, Wilson arranges a number of Noguchi’s "Akari Light Sculptures" (the Noguchi lamps) in a bed of granite paving chips, a site installation that plays on the traditional Japanese rock garden. In fact, the entire exhibit reads like an installation.
The next gallery is devoted to Noguchi’s famed collaborative work with performing artists like Martha Graham, George Balanchine, Erick Hawkins and John Cage. The theatrical spot lighting in the blacked out gallery space produces a dramatic effect and recreates a staged setting. It is really dark. Luckily, all the stumbling and groping about playfully adds a wonderful heightened sense of the theatrics.
Noguchi brings his sculptor’s sense of objects in form and space to his design work for the performing arts. No doubt these pieces could stand alone, but were clearly designed to work in a specific time and space with specific interactions in mind and are really completed in the collaboration. Just by "being" in the space with the pieces we get a sense of the dramatic performance and we are treated to a taste of the performance experience; additionally, there are monitors in the gallery playing loops of footage from actual performances, including Martha Graham’s 1950 production of Night Journey.
Using a blend of the Japanese garden meets modern industrial materials, stylized set and arty diorama design, the remaining galleries house a variety of commission works, maquettes for sculptures, selected furniture and design projects including the Rockefeller Center Associated Press building commission and Detroit’s Hart Plaza public fountain.
"Isamu Noguchi: Sculptural Design" runs through October 3, 2004 and will be followed by "Noguchi and Graham", an exhibition presenting nine dance sets made during their 25 years of collaboration.
