NEW YORK, NY.- The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum announced Noguchi’s New York, on view from February 4–July 5, 2026. Organized on the occasion of the Museum’s 40th anniversary, and curated by Kate Wiener, Curator at The Noguchi Museum, the exhibition examines the artist’s deep and dynamic relationship with New York City, a place he called home for much of his life, and one that profoundly shaped his artistic vision.

Isamu Noguchi first moved to New York in 1922 at age seventeen, and the city remained his on-again-off-again home until his death in 1988. Though he spent much of his career traveling the world and forging meaningful connections in cities from Paris to Mexico City to Tokyo, Noguchi always returned to New York. “I’m really a New Yorker,” he said in a late career interview. “Not Japanese, not a citizen of the world, just a New Yorker who goes wandering around like many New Yorkers.” Here, he created some of his most iconic works, imagined countless unrealized projects, and envisioned spaces of civic possibility. Through a selection of sculptures, project models, photographs, and archival materials, Noguchi’s New York traces how the city’s material, cultural, social, and political landscape informed the artist’s work and how he, in turn, transformed New York.

Highlights include Noguchi’s unrealized proposals for playgrounds, gardens, and public plazas as seen through models and blueprints that underscore his ongoing attempts to sculpt spaces that encouraged non-directed play. For this exhibition, Noguchi’s visions for playground equipment and unrealized playgrounds are brought to life in the Museum’s galleries through a series of short animated films by Jack Cunningham and Nicolas Ménard of Eastend Western. These include new animations inspired by Play Mountain (1933), Playground Equipment (1940), Contoured Playground (1941), United Nations Playground (1952), and Riverside Playground (Adele Levy Memorial Playground) (1961–62).

The exhibition also traces the history behind Noguchi’s realized public works in the city, including News (Associated Press Building Plaque) (1938–40), Red Cube (1968), and the Sunken Garden at Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza (1961–64). An array of photographs and related materials document completed works that were later altered or destroyed, such as Noguchi’s interior designs for the Time & Life building (1944), a ceiling and waterfall design at 666 Fifth Avenue (1956–57), and public work titled Shinto (1974–75) for the lobby of the Bank of Tokyo in downtown Manhattan.

An additional section of archival materials offers glimpses into newly discovered project proposals and commissions that Noguchi considered, including a contoured sculpture garden for the Museum of Modern Art (1941), play equipment for the monkeys at the Bronx Zoo (1946), and an entire redesign of Washington Square Park (1961).

“Noguchi’s relationship with New York was one of constant return and reinvention,” says Kate Wiener, Curator, The Noguchi Museum. “The city shaped him, challenged him, and ultimately became the ground on which some of his most ambitious ideas were tested. With this exhibition, we explore his evolving relationship to the city’s political, material, and social landscapes and his vision for how public art could transform the very fabric of the city.”

The exhibition also explores the artist’s frequent clashes with the city’s political forces, most notably NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, whose resistance thwarted several of Noguchi’s public projects. In reflecting on both his triumphs and struggles, the show underscores Noguchi’s persistent belief in art’s ability to serve society.

Noguchi himself summed up this idealism: “Like a lot of New Yorkers, I was one of those bitten by some kind of an idealism…What made me do things [for New York]?...It’s not just a job. Cause I really don’t do it for money… It's simply a kind of gesture towards a faithfulness to one's idealism…New Yorkers after all felt a special relationship to the world. They were on this island looking out on the whole damn world, which they had to do something about. And so my way was not the way of words, but the way of doing things, making something which might sort of approach that which one felt the world could be. Little spots here and there, so that instead of going to the moon, you bring the moon to you.”

Noguchi’s New York encompasses more than 50 works and a wide array of archival materials that chronologically survey the artist’s dynamic output across six decades of working and living in the city. Additional highlights include a series of early portrait busts that showcase Noguchi’s vibrant and collaborative social network, a selection of abstract sculptures from his MacDougal Alley studio era, a dance set for Martha Graham’s Phaedra (1962), and works that highlight his civic engagement in the post war New York art scene.

“Noguchi believed deeply in New York as a place of possibility—a city where ideas could take root and shape the way we live together,” said Amy Hau, Director, The Noguchi Museum. “On the 40th anniversary of our Museum, we are proud to honor his vision by reflecting on how profoundly he contributed to the cultural and civic fabric of this city, and how his legacy continues to inspire new generations.” By foregrounding both realized works and unrealized visions, Noguchi’s New York presents the city not only as the backdrop of the artist’s life, but as a catalyst for his enduring belief in the power of art to create shared spaces of imagination, reflection, and play.