Noguchi Museum

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The Noguchi Museum – chartered as The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum – is the first museum in America to be founded, curated and initially funded by an artist for the display of his own work. The Museum and its encircling garden were also designed by Isamu Noguchi. An unusual aspect of the Museum is that it grew out of Noguchi's studio practice. Part of the Museum was Noguchi's studio; many of the Museum's staff members are or were artists and four key staff members served as Noguchi's studio assistants. This has led to a rare relationship of the staff to the Museum — the staff has an extraordinary familiarity with the collection and understanding of Noguchi's use of materials and of the artist's intention. All are strongly committed to the Museum's mission.

To house the museum, in 1974 Noguchi purchased a factory building and gas station located across the street from the studio in Long Island City, where he had worked and lived since the early 1960s. To manage the Museum, he established The Isamu Noguchi Foundation, Inc. The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum opened to the public in 1985. In 1999 the Foundation Board approved a $13.5 million Capital Master Plan to address structural concerns, ADA and NYC Building Code compliance and create a new public education facility. During renovation, the Museum relocated to a temporary space in Sunnyside, Queens, and held several thematic exhibitions of Noguchi’s work. In February 2004, The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum receive a provisional charter from New York State to formally designate its status as a museum, and was subsequently granted a 501(c)(3) public charity status. The Noguchi Museum reopened to the public at its newly renovated space in June 2004.

Once a seasonal museum, the Museum is now open year-round and continues to offer visitors the opportunity to interact with works of art from the permanent collection in an atmosphere of reflection and contemplation. The Noguchi Museum now also organizes changing exhibitions that offer new perspectives on Noguchi's art. This shift in focus enables the Museum not only to show Noguchi as a gifted artist but also to articulate the cultural time in which he worked, the many major cultural figures with whom he engaged and his influence on the art of today. The Museum also offers an expanded series of programs for children, families and a growing general public. The educational programs allow families and children to experience the full breadth of Noguchi’s artistry and vision and to explore the multi-layer meaning of his work, while discovering their own creativity through personal and meaningful art-making projects. The New York State Council on the Arts has recognized the Museum's educational program, Art for Families, as a stellar example of a community outreach program, and Art for Tots as a “superb approach” in making young children comfortable in a museum setting.

Today, the Museum continues to manage the world’s most extensive collection of Noguchi’s sculptures, architectural models, stage designs, drawings, and furniture designs. It serves the international community by loaning works to other institutions for special exhibitions, organizing traveling exhibitions, and offering scholars access to the artist’s extensive archives, including his correspondence, manuscripts and photographs.

Until March 26, 2008, a 60-foot-tall Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) was a prominent "centerpiece" of the sculpture garden at the museum. The tree was spared by Noguchi when in 1975 he bought the building which would become the museum and cleaned up its back lot. The tree was the only one he left in the yard, and the staff would eat lunch with Noguchi under it. "[I]n a sense, the sculpture garden was designed around the tree", said a former aide to Noguchi, Bonnie Rychlak, who later became the museum curator. By early 2008 the tree was found to be dying and might have crashed into the building, which was about to undergo an $8.2 million renovation. The museum hired the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, an artists' collective, to use the wood to make benches, sculptures and other amenities in and around the building. The tree's rings were counted, revealing its age to be 75, and museum officials hoped it would regenerate from a stump, as these trees often do.^[1]