LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- On the occasion of the exhibition Shin Banraisha: A Cultural Memory, The Noguchi Museum’s Second Sundays program for November is a conversation on the dismantling of Noguchi’s Shin Banraisha—a site-specific room and garden—and how this incident relates to larger issues of the preservation of modern art and architecture both in Japan and the United States.

Panelists include Mark Davidson, former Cultural Affairs Officer with the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, architect Hugh Hardy, and Marc Peter Keane, former chairman of the International Society to Save Kyoto. Journalist and urban critic Roberta Gratz, who also serves on the New York Landmarks Preservation Committee, will moderate. The event will take place on Sunday, November 12, 2006, 3:00 p.m. at The Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road at Vernon Blvd., Long Island City, New York.

Shin Banraisha: A Cultural Memory, on view at The Noguchi Museum November 1, 2006, through April 1, 2007, tells the story of the creation and dismantling of Shin Banraisha (Welcoming Space), an important site-specific work created by Isamu Noguchi. Widely viewed as a masterpiece of twentieth-century art and design, Shin Banraisha comprised a room and garden created for Keio University as part of its postwar rebuilding effort. It was designed by Noguchi in 1951–52 in collaboration with architect Yoshiro Taniguchi (father of the designer of the expanded Museum of Modern Art) and with assistance from designer Isamu Kenmochi. Shin Banraisha was dismantled by the University in 2003. The only remaining trace of the work is a “reconstruction” comprising some artifacts of the original that have been incorporated into a newly created space.

Featuring a model of the work and approximately thirty photographic panels, the exhibition shows three phases of Shin Banraisha’s existence: during construction, as a finished work, and, finally, as a “reconstruction.” In showing the life of this single work, Shin Banraisha: A Cultural Memory hopes to highlight some urgent issues related to cultural-heritage preservation. These include the need to view modernism as a historical period as much in need of preservation as earlier eras; the importance of preserving not only individual objects and buildings but also functional spaces; and the primacy of the original work of art.