The Noguchi Museum

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

“I like to think of playgrounds as a primer of shapes and functions; simple, mysterious, and evocative: thus educational...
05/29/2026

“I like to think of playgrounds as a primer of shapes and functions; simple, mysterious, and evocative: thus educational.” – Isamu Noguchi

Created for the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York,’ this hand-painted animation by .western is inspired by Noguchi’s 1941 models for playground equipment.

Noguchi presented these play structures to the New York City parks department hoping that they would be both fun and educational. The multiple-length swings, for instance, could teach a child that “the rate of swing is determined by the length of the pendulum.”

Although the designs were more in line with conventional playgrounds promoted by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, they were still considered too experimental and potentially dangerous to be built.

🛝 Learn more about Noguchi’s unrealized playground designs and see five animated films on view in ‘Noguchi’s New York,’ through September 13, 2026.
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[1] Animated film inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s ‘Playground Equipment,’ 2026. Vinyl emulsion on celluloid, 27 sec. Directed by Nicolas Ménard & Jack Cunningham, Eastend Western.
[2] Isamu Noguchi, models for ‘Playground Equipment,’ 1941.
[3] Installation view, ‘Noguchi’s New York.’ Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS

In connection with AAPINH heritage month, learn about the art, life, and legacy of Isamu Noguchi! Join us this weekend f...
05/22/2026

In connection with AAPINH heritage month, learn about the art, life, and legacy of Isamu Noguchi! Join us this weekend for:

🎨 Educator talk + Workshop at the Queens Public Library Whitestone branch
Friday, May 22, 2–3 pm

Join a Noguchi Museum Educator for an informal talk followed by hands-on art making exploring Noguchi’s sculptures, designs, public artworks, and playscapes around the world. Registration at the library is recommended, capacity limited. Adults and families (children ages 12+) welcome.

🖼️Public Tour in Mandarin Chinese at The Noguchi Museum
Sunday, May 24, 3–4 pm

Public tours in Mandarin Chinese with take place monthly on select Sundays at 3 pm. Tours are approximately one hour long, are conversational, and explore the Museum’s collection and exhibitions while introducing Noguchi’s life and vision. Free with admission, advance registration is not required.

🔗 Learn more about upcoming programs at the link in our bio!
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Images: Isamu Noguchi with sculptures in his Long Island City studio, c. 1960s. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 03885. Photo: Martha Swope. Public tour in Mandarin Chinese at The Noguchi Museum. Photo: Reiko Yoo Yanagi. (.y_) ©INFGM / ARS

05/21/2026

Enjoy the warm glow of Isamu Noguchi’s Akari light sculptures. 🌟

From May 27–31, Noguchi Museum members save 20% on in-stock Akari, publications, and select design works online and at The Noguchi Museum Shop.

Become a member to take part in this annual sale and enjoy additional benefits including unlimited free Museum admission, invitations to exclusive events, and a 10% discount in the Shop year-round.

Your membership and purchases directly support the Museum’s exhibitions and programs.

🔗Join today at the link in our bio!
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The Noguchi Museum Shop. ©INFGM / ARS

NYC teens: Grab your friends and take over the this Friday for Teens Take The Met! From 4–8 pm, The Met is free and ope...
05/13/2026

NYC teens: Grab your friends and take over the this Friday for Teens Take The Met!

From 4–8 pm, The Met is free and open for teens 13+ with a middle or high school ID. Drop in for art-making, performances, music, and more.

📍Find The Noguchi Museum’s table in gallery 209 of The Met’s Asian Art collection to learn about Isamu Noguchi’s artwork and participate in a special sculpting activity.

🖼️ Interested in other teen opportunities? Apply by May 31 for Making Your Mark, a paid studio art-making intensive for rising 11th and 12th grade high-school students this summer at The Noguchi Museum.

🔗 Learn more about both programs at the link in our bio.
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[1] Poster courtesy of . [2] Students participating in Making Your Mark at The Noguchi Museum. Photo: Saya Hashimoto.

41 years ago today, The Noguchi Museum opened to the public. In his later years, Isamu Noguchi was thinking deeply about...
05/11/2026

41 years ago today, The Noguchi Museum opened to the public.

In his later years, Isamu Noguchi was thinking deeply about the full scope of his work and legacy. Seeking independence from traditional museum models and the pressures of the market-driven art world, Noguchi decided to establish his own museum across the street from his studio in Long Island City. He envisioned it not only as a repository of his work, but also as a living resource—a place where visitors could gather, reflect, and learn.

Four decades later, the Museum remains one of Noguchi’s greatest sculpted environments.

It also embodies Noguchi’s effort to sculpt New York into a more humane, natural space for connection and creativity. For an artist whose civic ambitions were often blocked by New York city planner Robert Moses, who scorned Noguchi’s unconventional plans, the Museum’s opening represented a triumph over city politics.

Asked how he felt about the achievement, Noguchi replied, “I feel I’ve outsmarted Mr. Moses, is what I feel.”

📸 The above 1985 photographs of The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now known as The Noguchi Museum) by Shigeo Anzai are currently on view in the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York,’ through September 13, 2026.

🔗 Learn more and plan a visit at the link in our bio.
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The Noguchi Museum Archives. ©INFGM / ARS

Looking for ways to celebrate Mother’s Day? Join our upcoming stroller tour and enjoy a morning in the blooming sculptur...
05/07/2026

Looking for ways to celebrate Mother’s Day? Join our upcoming stroller tour and enjoy a morning in the blooming sculpture garden! 🌸

🗓️ On Wednesday, May 13, from 10:30–11:30 am, parents of newborn babies 0–12 months are invited to a stroller or carrier-friendly tour at The Noguchi Museum.

Led by , each tour begins with time in the galleries to learn about Isamu Noguchi’s life and artwork, and ends in the Museum’s Education Studio with unstructured time to connect with other families and engage babies through music and sensory activities. Stroller tours are recommended for babies who are not yet mobile.

🔗 Register for the tour and learn more about upcoming family programs at the link in our bio.
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Photos: Reiko Yoo Yanagi, Salvador Espinoza. ©INFGM / ARS

Did you know that Isamu Noguchi was the first solo artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale?In 1986,...
05/06/2026

Did you know that Isamu Noguchi was the first solo artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale?

In 1986, Noguchi made history with the exhibition ‘What is Sculpture?,’ a provocative presentation that confounded critics for challenging conventional distinctions between art, design, and environment.

At the center of the show was ‘Slide Mantra’, a ten-foot marble spiral slide installed in the Pavilion’s courtyard that embodied Noguchi’s decades-long commitment to play. The exhibition also included large-scale stone and steel pieces, as well as prominently featured Akari light sculptures.

➡️ Now on view at The Noguchi Museum, a new archival presentation titled ‘Light and Stone: Revisiting Noguchi’s 1986 Venice Biennale’ examines the artist’s exhibition through archival photographs, architectural sketches, a model for ‘Slide Mantra,’ and Akari.

‘Light and Stone’ is a single-gallery presentation located in Area 5 of the Museum’s first floor. It is curated by Hitomi Iwasaki, Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs.

🔗 Learn more and plan a visit at the link in our bio.
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Images: [1] Isamu Noguchi on top of ‘Slide Mantra’ at ‘Isamu Noguchi: What is Sculpture?,’ Venice Biennale, June 29–September 28, 1986. Photo: Shigeo Anzai, 144050. [2-9] Installation views, ‘Isamu Noguchi: What is Sculpture?.’ Venice Biennale, 1986. Photos: Shigeo Anzai and an unknown photographer. Courtesy of The Noguchi Museum Archives. ©INFGM / ARS

Isamu Noguchi created several proposals for the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair, which opened in Flushing Meadows Corona P...
04/30/2026

Isamu Noguchi created several proposals for the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair, which opened in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, on April 30, 1939.

The exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York’ explores three of Noguchi’s projects for the Fair, examining the tension between the influence of labor and capital playing out in Noguchi’s work and in the culture at large during the 1930s. Noguchi proposed an unrealized sculpture and mural for a pavilion honoring unionized work, and a realized fountain for the Ford Motor Company’s V-8 engine.

Featured here [1-3] is Noguchi’s proposal for the Fair’s unrealized Labor Pavilion.

Noguchi designed a monumental sculpture of a muscled worker who would appear to hold up the building. Though ultimately never built, Noguchi’s design powerfully conveyed the worker’s foundational role in uplifting institutions, and was said to represent “all unions striving towards ‘One Big Union.’”

Noguchi also worked with artists Philip Guston and Harold Lehman on a mural to adorn the building’s 300-foot triangular fin, though there is no extant documentation of their unrealized plans. Noguchi’s collaborative work on the pavilion speaks to his own commitment to unionized labor at the time, and his deeply held concern for the collective.

➡️ Learn more about Noguchi’s proposals for the World’s Fair by visiting the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York’ through September 13, 2026.
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Images: [1] Isamu Noguchi, ‘Model of Sculpture for Labor Pavilion,’ 1938. [2–3] Installation views, ‘Noguchi’s New York.’ On wall: ‘Model of Sculpture for Labor Pavilion,’ 1938. Plaster, metal. On pedestal: 1939 World’s Fair Labor Pavilion (unrealized) designed by Percival Goodman with sculpture by Isamu Noguchi. Fabricated by Daniel DaSilva, 2025. Photo: Nicholas Knight. [4-5] ‘Noguchi’s New York’ archival display, photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS

04/22/2026

“In the city you have to have a new nature. Maybe you have to create that nature” –Isamu Noguchi.

How do you stay connected to nature in the city?

On this , we’re taking a look at Isamu Noguchi’s ‘Sunken Garden,’ (1961–64) a sculpted environment tucked beneath New York City’s bustling financial district.

Seeking to create a “quasi-nature” in the plaza below Chase Manhattan Bank, Noguchi turned in part to Japanese materials and tradition. He transported seven stones from Kyoto’s Uji River, which he carefully placed on granite pavers arranged to evoke a Zen garden’s raked sand. Fountains of water are interspersed, adding a natural soundscape to counter the roar of city life.

‘Sunken Garden’ is just one example in which Noguchi sought to forge a dialogue between natural materials and their “unnatural” counterparts. The resulting public work, where river stones relate to the “soaring atmosphere above it,” reminds us that, even in the center of a crowded urban landscape, we can still find ways to connect to the Earth.

‘Sunken Garden’ is located at 28 Liberty Street, where visitors can view the artwork from above.

Learn more about this work in the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York,’ on view at The Noguchi Museum through September 13, 2026.
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Video footage: Isamu Noguchi, ‘Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza,’ (1961–64), 2022. Directed & Produced by Miguel de Guzmán and Rocío Romero / Imagen Subliminal
#イサムノグチ

Arshile Gorky (c. 1904–1948) gave this drawing as a gift to Isamu Noguchi. It can be seen on the bedroom wall of Noguchi...
04/15/2026

Arshile Gorky (c. 1904–1948) gave this drawing as a gift to Isamu Noguchi. It can be seen on the bedroom wall of Noguchi’s studio in Long Island City, Queens, in this 1964 portrait by Dan Budnik [2].

One of Noguchi’s closest friends in the 1940s, Gorky was an Armenian-born painter who had fled genocide at home before establishing himself as a prominent figure in the New York art scene. The two artists would frequent museums together, and came to share a visual language of abstract biomorphic forms, often expressive of a shared sense of otherness.

They were bonded, as Noguchi later reflected, by “a certain loneliness,” by “not being entirely American.” Noguchi and Gorky even collaborated on a series of artworks at Noguchi’s former studio at 52 West 10th Street at the onset of World War II.

“I remember when Hi**er invaded Poland I was with [Arshile] Gorky and De Hirsh Margules [in my studio]. That night we were listening to the radio, as a matter of fact. We made several paintings together at that time,” Noguchi later recalled.

Learn more about Noguchi and Gorky’s relationship and view this rarely-seen drawing in the exhibition ‘Noguchi’s New York’ (through September 13, 2026), curated by Kate Wiener.

And, join us and Village Preservation
at 52 West 10th Street at 6 pm on April 16 for the unveiling of a new plaque dedicated to Noguchi, where we’ll hear more about the artist’s work, collaborations, and life during this time in the West Village.
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[1] Arshile Gorky, ‘Untitled (Nighttime, Enigma and Nostalgia),’ c. 1931–32. Ink on paper. Collection of Isamu Noguchi. [2] Isamu Noguchi at his 10th street studio in Long Island City, Queens, 1964, with ‘Untitled (Nighttime, Enigma and Nostalgia)’ on the wall. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 07283. Photo: Dan Budnik. [3] Installation view, ‘Noguchi’s New York.’ Photo: Nicholas Knight. ©INFGM / ARS
#イサムノグチ

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

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(718) 204-7088

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