For Isamu Noguchi, New York City was a place to play

‘I’m really a New Yorker,’ Isamu Noguchi said in an interview towards the end of his 60-year career as one of the world’s foremost makers of public art. ‘Not Japanese,’ he continued, ‘not a citizen of the world.’ The Japanese-American sculptor and multi-hyphenate artist was, in a sense, a citizen of many places and none at all. Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Arizona were all, at certain points, where he lived, designed and created. But New York constituted his eternal return. He was, in his own words, ‘a New Yorker who goes wandering around, like many New Yorkers.’

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum (founded and designed by the artist himself in 1985) explores this self-identifying sentiment in the current exhibition, Noguchi’s New York, on view from 4 February through 13 September 2026. The exhibition examines Noguchi’s enduring and foundational relationship with New York City, one which, perhaps more so than any other locale, profoundly shaped his artistic vision. Curated by Kate Wiener, Curator at The Noguchi Museum, this is the first exhibition to explore this symbiotic rapport between the artist and his adopted home. A diverse selection of sculptures, project models, photographs and archival materials — some of which were only recently discovered and have never been exhibited publicly — conjure a powerful and moving testament of Noguchi’s vision.

Noguchi moved to New York in 1922 at age 17 for medical school (studies he later put aside). He began his artistic education through apprenticeships and friendships from around the globe with luminaries including Constantin Brâncuși, Man Ray, and Buckminster Fuller. New York would remain his on-again-off-again home until his death in 1988. His pioneering ideas for what sculpture could achieve — that it should be immersive and approachable, not purely visual nor impassive — laid the groundwork for his commitment to public art and a civic approach.

‘I could never believe that the experience of sculpture had to be restricted to vision only,’ he explained. ‘The making and ownership of art could also be beyond personal possession — a common and free experience.’ He often described his work as the ‘sculpture of spaces’, a point that Noguchi’s New York expertly communicates. Many of his most ambitious works, according to Wiener, were conceived and built in New York.

‘His first-ever proposal for New York City was wildly ambitious; to turn an entire city block into a mountain landscape for play,’ says Wiener. ‘The incredible aspiration in that project can be seen throughout all of his work for the city.’

Several of his most famous public works in the city that never sleeps, such as News (Associated Press Building Plaque) (1938–40), Red Cube (1968), and the Sunken Garden at Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza (1961–64), are given new meaning through photographs, blueprints, and other archival materials that document their inception and execution.

A sizable portion of the exhibition is devoted to his unrealised projects, including many proposals for gardens, public plazas, and playgrounds for the city’s youth as seen through models and blueprints. Designs for play equipment for monkeys at the Bronx Zoo and an innovative redesign of Washington Square Park are highlights of this selection.

One of the most arresting of these speculative works is the aforementioned Play Mountain, a 1933 proposal for a park that would encompass an entire city block. It features steps of varying heights, terraces, a pool and bandshell, a slide with water in the summer and a longer one for sledding in winter, carved from the land itself, using no additional equipment. The extraordinary architectural sculpture would combine elements of ancient pyramids and Roman amphitheatres, for children to engage with and interpret as they wished.

‘He talked about the playground designs as these places where kids could discover the world as if they were the first people on earth, which I think is really beautiful, and in some ways that's what many of his sculptures do too,’ says Wiener. ‘They force you to reconfront your relationship with nature and with time. But he was especially able to do it in these compact spaces.’

Regrettably, this proposal and others were heartily thwarted by the infamous NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and were never built.

These proposals for playful communal spaces are not only charming, they provide an ideal lens to examine Noguchi’s feelings for New York. The city was, for him, as it is for many, a microcosm of the world, in much the same way that a playground represents a kind of model or theatrical version of the adult world. By showcasing visions realized and unrealized, Noguchi’s New York presents an intimate view into Noguchi’s imagination, allowing for a more expansive understanding of the artist’s mind, hopes and ideas — and his profound perception of the city.

‘What I was most inspired by was this incredible sense of ambition and restless idealism that he would continually return to, thinking of new ways to change his surroundings, to make this a better place for people to be in,’ Wiener shares. ‘He never gave up on that dream. I hope people will be similarly inspired by this idea of his, that you can continually remake your surroundings and reimagine what you want your city, and your world, to be.’