The Noguchi Museum

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The Noguchi Museum Dedicated to Isamu Noguchi’s works, and programming with related modern and contemporary artists. 13 galleries and outdoor sculpture garden. Open Wed–Sun.
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Founded in 1985 by Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), one of the leading sculptors and designers of the twentieth century, The Noguchi Museum was the first museum in America to be founded, designed, and installed by a living artist to show their own work. Widely viewed as among the artist’s greatest achievements, the Museum features an indoor/outdoor sculpture garden and two floors of exhibition space in a converted factory building. Since its founding, it has served as an international hub for Noguchi research and appreciation. In addition to housing the artist’s archives and the catalogue raisonné of his work, the Museum exhibits a comprehensive selection of sculpture, models for public projects and gardens, dance sets, and his Akari light sculptures. Provocative, frequently-changing installations drawn from the permanent collection, together with diverse special exhibitions, offer a rich, contextualized view of Noguchi’s art and illuminate his enduring influence as a category-defying, multicultural, cross-disciplinary innovator. The Noguchi Museum is located at 9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, New York. It is open Wednesday–Sundays with seasonal hours. General admission is $16; $6 for senior citizens and students with a valid ID. New York City public high-school students, children under 12, and Museum members are admitted free of charge. Admission is free on the first Friday of every month. Public tours in English are available daily at 2 pm. Tours in Spanish and Japanese are offered monthly. 718-204-7088 | www.noguchi.org

On Tuesday night, we were honored to present the 13th annual Isamu Noguchi Award to Danh Vo and Yohji Yamamoto at the Mu...
10/09/2026

On Tuesday night, we were honored to present the 13th annual Isamu Noguchi Award to Danh Vo and Yohji Yamamoto at the Museum’s annual benefit.

The annual benefit is the Noguchi Museum’s most important fundraising event, supporting its exhibitions, education programs, care for the world’s largest collection of Noguchi’s work, and the preservation of the artist’s archives and spaces.

We are so grateful to everyone who joined us under the glow of Akari and supported this meaningful evening.

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Special thanks to the many creative collaborators who helped make the night wonderful, including: Andrey & Melissa (Andrey and Melissa), BITE (B I T E | food + people + craft), Eriko Nagata Floral Studio (Eriko Nagata Floral Studio), Alex Meillier/Ager Meillier Films, Yeju Choi/Nowhere Office, Yvonne Tnt (YVONNE TNT 📸) / BFA, Don Stahl, and partner Suntory Wh**ky
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Photos by Yvonne TNT/BFA.com and Don Stahl. ©INFGM / ARS

On Tuesday night, we were honored to present the 13th annual Isamu Noguchi Award to Danh Vo and Yohji Yamamoto at the Mu...
10/08/2026

On Tuesday night, we were honored to present the 13th annual Isamu Noguchi Award to Danh Vo and Yohji Yamamoto at the Museum’s annual benefit.

Conferred each year since 2014, the Isamu Noguchi Award recognizes creative kindred spirits whose practices carry forward ideals important to Noguchi in today’s world.

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Image: Yohji Yamamoto Yohji Yamamoto Official
Photo Takay

For more than five decades, Yohji Yamamoto has challenged conventions of fashion, developing a singular visual language that has influenced generations of designers around the world.

Looking to forms of the past and distilling their essential qualities into futuristic reimaginings, his practice resonates with Noguchi’s ideals of “true development” of craft traditions.

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From ‘Yohji Yamamoto Drawings’ (Thames & Hudson, 2026)
Courtesy of Yohji Yamamoto Official

Just as Noguchi continuously challenged the limitations of sculpture, Yamamoto interrogates perceptions of clothing and broadens our understanding of its possibilities.

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Yohji Yamamoto, 2026–27 Autumn/Winter Collection
Courtesy of Yohji Yamamoto Official

“Isamu Noguchi created a language that opened up a space between East and West, and therefore beyond.

I have always felt that creation should also exist somewhere between things, and thus in a space outside of apparent contradictions: between form and the body, strength and fragility, presence, and absence.”

Yohji Yamamoto Yohji Yamamoto Official, 2026 Isamu Noguchi Award

On Tuesday night, we were honored to present the 13th annual Isamu Noguchi Award to Danh Vo and Yohji Yamamoto at the Mu...
10/08/2026

On Tuesday night, we were honored to present the 13th annual Isamu Noguchi Award to Danh Vo and Yohji Yamamoto at the Museum’s annual benefit.

Conferred each year since 2014, the Isamu Noguchi Award recognizes creative kindred spirits whose practices carry forward ideals important to Noguchi in today’s world.

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Image: Danh Vo Danh Vo in the Noguchi Museum garden. Photo YVONNE TNT 📸 / BFA

Artist Danh Vo creates environments for exploration and contemplation, bringing objects, architecture, design, and cultural memory into dialogue.

Over the past decade, Vo has engaged in an ongoing conversation with Noguchi’s works, exploring tensions across place and time in meditative, experiential spaces.

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Image: Isamu Noguchi / Danh Vo, ‘A Cloud and Flowers,’ December 11, 2021–September 4, 2022. Mudam Luxembourg Mudam Luxembourg Photo: Nick Ash

Vo’s multidisciplinary practice, engagement with histories and the natural world, and deeply collaborative and intuitive methods echo qualities central to Noguchi’s own life and work.

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Danh Vo, Güldenhof, Germany. Photo: Nick Ash

“What I learned from Noguchi is that a stone is not different from paper—in his mind it was all the same. In societies, they are separated … But when you look deep into the Akari, they are as the stones—differently because the material is different, but the mind is all there. So that is why I engage with working with the Akari, even for myself as an artist to understand what that means … I always thought that this museum was a paradise, and one of the things that Noguchi taught me is that paradises are built when it’s needed.”

Danh Vo Danh Vo, 2026 Isamu Noguchi Award

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Photo Nicholas Knight

On this day in 1952, Isamu Noguchi presented his first public exhibition of Akari light sculptures at the Museum of Mode...
09/23/2026

On this day in 1952, Isamu Noguchi presented his first public exhibition of Akari light sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, Japan.

The exhibition displayed Akari alongside recent ceramic sculptures that Noguchi created at the rural estate of potter Kitaoji Rosanjin in nearby Kita Kamakura. Noguchi deliberately paired these bodies of work, regarding them as parallel efforts to reimagine Japanese craft traditions for a modern present while honoring their roots in nature and tradition.

While Noguchi’s Akari adapted the centuries-old craft of Gifu chochin lanterns, his clay sculptures drew on Japanese ceramic traditions, including ‘haniwa’—ancient earthen burial figures. His ceramics were shaped from clay gathered directly from the earth, and his Akari evoked the warmth of natural light.

As part of our upcoming exhibition ‘No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75,’ opening on November 4, 2026, galleries will take inspiration from Noguchi’s own presentation of Akari and ceramics in Kamakura, Japan, once again placing these works in dialogue with one another.

Learn more about the upcoming exhibition and the 75th anniversary of Akari by visiting the link in our bio.
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Installation views, ‘Isamu Noguchi Exhibition,’ Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, Japan, September 23 – October 19, 1952. The Noguchi Museum Archives. ©INFGM / ARS

Admission to The Noguchi Museum is half price through November 1 while the second floor is closed for the installation o...
09/18/2026

Admission to The Noguchi Museum is half price through November 1 while the second floor is closed for the installation of our upcoming exhibition ‘No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75.’

The Museum’s first floor galleries and garden are open, with daily public tours at 2 pm. These permanent installations include Isamu Noguchi’s sculptures in basalt, granite, marble, and metal, and reflect the artist’s own decisions when he curated and installed the galleries in the 1980s.

The Museum is open Wednesday–Sunday, with seasonal hours from 11 am–6 pm. Learn more and plan a visit at the link in our bio.
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Photos: Chanel Matsunami Govreau (Chanel Matsunami Govreau) Nicholas Knight (Nicholas Knight), Miki Takashima. (Miki Takashima) ©INFGM / ARS

Opening November 4, 2026, ‘No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75,’ celebrates the 75th anniversary and enduring significance of...
09/16/2026

Opening November 4, 2026, ‘No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75,’ celebrates the 75th anniversary and enduring significance of Isamu Noguchi’s pioneering light sculptures.

Noguchi first created Akari during a 1951 visit to Gifu, Japan, where he reimagined the sculptural possibilities of the traditional paper lantern. Insisting that “Akari is no ordinary light,” he conceived of each model as a “luminous sculpture” that “comes to life in how it is shown, in how it is in relation to people’s lives and in relation to the environment in which it is placed.”

This exhibition takes inspiration from Noguchi’s own presentation of Akari throughout this career, placing them in dialogue with works in stone, metal, and clay, and within settings that range from intimate domestic interiors to monumental installations.

🔗 Learn more about the exhibition at the link in our bio or by visiting noguchi.org.
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Isamu Noguchi with Akari light sculptures in Japan, 1968. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 03620. ©INFGM / ARS

09/12/2026

For decades, Isamu Noguchi attempted to create a playground for New York City.

Noguchi dreamed of replacing fenced-in rows of metal swings and slides with open-ended sculptural environments that could foster connection, discovery, and reflection. Though none of his ideas were realized, he never stopped trying.

These hand-painted animated films created by .western are inspired by Noguchi’s models, offering us a glimpse into what might have been.

Don’t miss your chance to see them on view in the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York’ before it closes this weekend on Sunday, September 13.
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Audio: Isamu Noguchi discussing his unrealized Playground Proposals for New York City
c. 1970. The Noguchi Museum Archives. © INFGM / ARS

Animated films inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s Playground Proposals for New York City, 2026
Vinyl emulsion on celluloid. Directed by Nicolas Ménard & Jack Cunningham, Eastend Western .western

09/09/2026

2026 marks the 75th anniversary of Isamu Noguchi’s Akari light sculptures.

Of all of Noguchi’s interests—of all of the mediums and ideas he explored in over sixty years of working—no series or project endured as long as Akari. It was, as the artist once said, the only project he pursued “out of pure love.”

Noguchi created his first washi paper and bamboo light sculptures in 1951 during a visit to Gifu, Japan that inspired him to reimagine the possibilities of traditional Japanese chochin lanterns. He would go on to produce more than 200 distinct models over the next three decades, continuously experimenting with new construction methods, patterns, and forms. He named them Akari—the Japanese word for “light,” which to the artist evoked both illumination and weightlessness.

In this anniversary year, The Noguchi Museum is celebrating the extraordinary history of Akari through a series of special exhibitions, shop releases, and events – including our upcoming exhibition ‘No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75,’ opening at the Museum on November 4.

Learn more about the exhibition at the link in our bio, and stay tuned for more Akari-related announcements in the coming weeks.

09/08/2026

This is the last week to see the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York,’ before it closes on Sunday, September 13.

Through sculptures, project models, archival materials, and newly commissioned animated films, the exhibition explores Isamu Noguchi’s deep and dynamic connection to New York, and his commitment to sculpting the city into a better place.

The Museum is open Wednesday–Sunday with seasonal hours from 11 am– 6 pm. Learn more and plan a visit at the link in our bio.
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Installation views, ‘Noguchi’s New York.’ Cover image: Nicholas Knight. Nicholas Knight. Animated films directed by Nicolas Ménard & Jack Cunningham, Eastend Western. .western. ©INFGM / ARS

In the 1960s, Isamu Noguchi created ‘Octetra,’ a sculpture that can be oriented and interlocked to create endlessly muta...
09/04/2026

In the 1960s, Isamu Noguchi created ‘Octetra,’ a sculpture that can be oriented and interlocked to create endlessly mutable landscapes for play.

These sculptural play elements are deeply connected to Noguchi’s work and relationships in New York City. The work synthesizes the geometric poetry of ‘Red Cube,’ a public sculpture for downtown Manhattan created in the same year, with the logic of his play element networks devised for Riverside Park.

‘Octetra’ is also tied to three individuals who Noguchi worked closely with in New York: his longtime friend Buckminster Fuller, who inspired his thinking about the fundamental structures of nature, architect Shoji Sadao, a valued collaborator who helped engineer ‘Octetra’s’ design; and visionary supporter Priscilla Morgan, who enmeshed the artist in her rich social network and commissioned the sculpture for the Spoleto Festival in Italy.

‘Octetra’ is currently on view in the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York,’ through September 13. It will also be on view at the Lever House building in ‘Isamu Noguchi at Lever House’ from September 14, 2026 – Summer, 2027.
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Isamu Noguchi, ‘Octetra,’ (two-element column) c. 1965 (fabricated 2021). Fiber reinforced plastic and paint. Installation view, ‘Noguchi’s New York,’ February 4–September 13, 2026. Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS

Isamu Noguchi with ‘Octetra’ in Spoleto, Italy, 1968. Video: Dimitri Hadzi. The Noguchi Museum Archives, AV_F16_005_1968. ©INFGM / ARS

Isamu Noguchi, ‘Octetra’ (five-element pyramid) c. 1965 (fabricated 2021). Fiberglass reinforced plastic and paint. Photo:Theo Christelis, White Cube © INFGM / ARS

Address

9-01 33rd Road (At Vernon Blvd)
Long Island City, NY
11106

Opening Hours

Wednesday 11am - 6pm
Thursday 11am - 6pm
Friday 11am - 6pm
Saturday 11am - 6pm
Sunday 11am - 6pm

Telephone

(718) 204-7088

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