A Place in the World
The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City
We’ve all done this in a museum: firmly stationed ourselves facing a work of art and then considered it as if it were the only thing that mattered in the room, at least for those 10 seconds.
Now imagine a space that invites a different choreography between object and viewer, one that shifts, glimpses, circulates, teases, and surprises, both increasing (view)points of connection and slowing experience—inviting relationships with other objects and conditions (light, architecture, humans in motion) and opening time for each work to both come towards us and retreat without our fierce museum stare stopping it in its tracks.
The Noguchi Museum (formerly the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum) in Long Island City, Queens, NY, is the artist-designed space founded by Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) in 1985. “Located in a 1920s industrial building across the street from where the artist had established a studio in 1960, it has a serene outdoor sculpture garden, and many galleries that display Noguchi’s work, along with photographs, drawings, and models from his career” (Museum website).
I turned to Matthew Kirsch, Curator and Director of Research at The Noguchi Museum, and Kate Wiener, Curator at The Noguchi Museum, to learn more about Noguchi’s unique and original intentions in designing a museum of his own work, and how the Museum presents his work today.
