The Noguchi Museum celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, announcing three new shows that will open this fall and next spring: “Museum of Stones” and “Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony” at the Noguchi Museum; and “Isamu Noguchi” at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In addition, to the museum will publish a volume of photographs documenting the design and life of the artist. Museum Director, Jenny Dixon said, “Isamu Noguchi was a truly protean artist, ignoring the boundaries between art and design and ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ art long before this was widely accepted.”
“Museum of Stones” opens October 7 and will include over 50 works from about 30 artists (like Mel Bochner, Jimmie Durham, and Gabriel Orozco) and explores the ways in which artists and culture have used rock and stone across the globe. The works will be,installed throughout the museum’s expansive second floor with some additions to the historic first floor that Noguchi designed himself..
In September, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden will commemorate its Japanese garden’s opening in 1914 with an exhibition of Noguchi sculpture and landscaping. “Gardens, parks, and playgrounds represented the apex of Noguchi’s ambitions for sculpture,” said Senior Curator Dakin Hart. Photographs from the 1914 opening were used to choose which Noguchi sculptures would be included in the landscape, like Strange Bird (To the Sunflower) (Unknown Bird) (1945-1971).
Next March, “Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony” will open as a dystopian look at technology and tradition. NASA, representing the bleeding-edge of engineering and technology, and Chanoyu, representing centuries of Japanese tradition and practice, come together in order to create an understanding between two arguing astronauts. The “Tea Ceremony” performance and subsequent video will be the first exhibition at the museum to present work by a single artists other than Noguchi.
