What most people know of the designer Isamu Noguchi is either limited to the objects that are his most enduring legacy—Akari, the quiet, rice-paper shade lamp; his coffee table, a blobby glass top perched upon two curving, undulating pieces of wood—or the fact that he self-interned in Arizona's Poston camp in 1942, with the intention of improving the lives of interred Japanese-Americans from within.
Neither his home goods nor his voluntary incarceration are the focus, however, of "Noguchi's New York," the ongoing new exhibit at the Noguchi Museum. Instead, it explores the large-scale projects he poured himself into for New York, the city that he loved and called home, that never came to pass due to unimaginative city officials unwilling to take a risk. Noguchi's vision for New York City, it turns out, was too forward-looking and radical in scope—and would have dramatically changed the way New Yorkers interact with public space and each other by encouraging something akin to community and play.
The exhibit, currently on show at the museum through September 13, is a retrospective of the artist’s indefatigable attempts at mounting giant public works that, had they actually been erected, would have reshaped huge swathes of the city, from Riverside Park to the UN Plaza.