digitalcommons.nyls.edu Academic Centers and Programs Rooftops Project Spring 2014 Profile - The ogN uchi Museum James Hagy New York Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/rooftops_project Part of the Business Organizations Law Commons, Land Use Law Commons, Legal Education Commons, Organizations Law Commons, Property Law and Real Estate Commons, Social Welfare Law Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons, and the Tax Law Commons Recommended Citation Hagy, James, "Profile - The oN guchi Museum" (2014). Rooftops Project. Book 19. http://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/rooftops_project/19 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Academic Centers and Programs at DigitalCommons@NYLS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Rooftops Project by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@NYLS. THE ROOFTOPS PROJECT Photo Credit: Clara Jauquet Proles The Noguchi Museum Few not-for-prot cultural or historic sites can be www.noguchi.org and in The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, written in his traced through a single thread, from a heritage in an own voice and published by Harry N. Abrams Inc. unlikely industrial setting in Queens; its conversion to RTP: You have been here for a while [smiling]. workspace for the creation, staging, and deployment of art throughout the world; its rededication by the living Amy: I have been at the Noguchi Museum since 1986. I rst came to the Museum as Noguchi’s assistant. He had just opened the Museum in 1985. I artist as a museum space while still a working gallery; arrived the year after. Back in the day it was still very much a studio setting. and ultimately its preservation as a permanent cultural His ofce here was primarily his design ofce, where he worked on a lot of destination. At the Noguchi Museum, members and his public projects. visitors can appreciate artist Isamu Noguchi’s full body He had established a foundation to support the Museum, which opened in 1985. He remained the foundation’s chairman for a few years before he of work in many media, enjoy the tranquility of galleries passed away. Unlike any other artist’s foundation at the time, and even to and gardens in a profoundly close-by urban setting, and this day, it did not give grants. He was not in that position, to create a grant- issuing foundation. The goal was to see to this facility and to make sure that it understand the context in which that art was inspired was open to the public. Those goals were very modest at rst, writing grants and created over more than half a century. Professor to the City. And all along the City was very generous in its support to the James Hagy, Director of The Rooftops Project, explores Museum. It was very, very organic in nature how the foundation grew. the life and legacy of Japanese-American artist Isamu At the time I came in, he was just putting together his thoughts on the collection in a catalog that he had written for the Museum. I saw the tail Noguchi with Amy Hau, The Noguchi Museum’s end of that process through with him. It was a learning experience to read Director of Administration and External Affairs. his thoughts about every single object in the collection on view. They were not necessarily descriptive of the work or the process of making the art. They Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) worked in a full range of could be philosophical, they could be very playful, very witty. It might be a media from two- and three-dimensional art, to architectural models and stage sentence, or maybe a paragraph, recalling a time when he did a particular design, to furniture and lamps, including his signature glass-topped Noguchi process. So it gave insight into the way he thought. Table and his paper lamps known as Akari Light Sculptures. He enjoyed commissions for installed sculptures at important sites throughout the world, RTP: When he rst came to the neighborhood, it wasn’t originally with the including his stone garden at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. He worked from idea of a museum. In a way, he came to that idea later, if not also somewhat studios in Queens, New York, and on the Japanese island of Shikoku. Toward reluctantly? the end of his career, he formed the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and founded the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City as well as preserving his studio Amy: What is now the Museum was his studio for many years, before he in Japan. More information on the artist and the Museum can be found at opened it to the public. From 1961 to the mid-1970s, he had a studio practice WE ARE NEW YORK’S LAW SCHOOL THE ROOFTOPS PROJECT Pro les across the street and outgrew that space. That is why he purchased what is around the world that he had been working on and in the various studios. In now the main Museum building. He moved everything into this building as addition to Japan, he also had a small set-up in a studio in Italy. So it was a showroom for many years. So for him, when it came time to create that a lot of coordinated effort among different staff members and working with museum setting, it was natural for him to just be here. This was where he the attorneys. started, and where he worked. It was working space and more or less a Then it just kept rolling on. We started mounting exhibitions, and recognizing showroom for a long time. that there was a lot in the holdings. The best way to share that was traveling exhibitions, to share the work in different countries. He worked in so many RTP: Buyers would come here to buy art. countries, and he didn’t always have representation in all these different places. So it was wonderful, it was really an incredible journey up to now. Amy: Yes, but he also had dealers. It was really a place to temporarily house It is still fun. works that were traveling for exhibitions, or nishing works, for sites around the world, for which he created models. Because he wasn’t an architect, and RTP: The piece of land we are on here at the museum is a very familiar he wasn’t a draftsperson, he liked working in three-dimensional models, geometric shape, but not a common shape for a property. where he can study and adjust the scales of elements in a design. He needed a large space to lay the models out. It was really a thinking studio. Amy: It is quite odd. RTP: In these ways, both in the materials used and the scale of them, this RTP: It is a triangle. building and the neighborhood were particularly suited to his work? Amy: It is a triangle. We are so off the grid in that way. There is part of the Amy: Yes. He had an appreciation not just for the building itself, but the grid that starts elsewhere in Queens, but by the time you get here along the location. There were a lot of light industry/manufacturing companies nearby. waterfront, because of the topography and the water, blocks are cut off in They were the source of materials for him. There were stone yards, foundries, the strangest of places. You may have half a block with rhomboids and other metal workers. He found all this craftsmanship and the material goods very weird pieces of property. handy. He was in the studio all the time, so he could work all day and all night sometimes, and no one really made a fuss about noise or anything. It was very RTP: What was the original brick building used for? quiet back in those days. In the two years following my arrival, before he passed, it was really an Amy: The main, red brick portion of the Museum building was on the site insane amount of work trying to track his whereabouts all the time. He when Noguchi purchased it. It was originally built in 1924. It was originally traveled a lot. New York was his home base. He went back to his studio in a photo-engraving ink factory. At the time, there were a lot of newspaper Japan at least three times a year, if not more, and would come back with presses out here. Paper and inks and all the different materials were needed. photo documentation of the work in process there. In between the studio visits and stopping in New York, he would take Photo Credit: Shigeo Anzai a vacation here, or accept an award, or check in on a public work project somewhere, whether it was Miami or going back to UNESCO to inspect a project in Paris. He was always working, always, always working. To this day I run into neighbors who used to see him coming in and out of the place, and they remark on how he was always in a thinking mode. They would just watch him walk and pace or think and not go up to him and disturb him. It must have been very interesting back then. RTP: As it turned out, this was also a period in which you gained insights into Noguchi, his work, and his vision for the Museum that would inform the next 25 or more years of the organization in a very meaningful way? Amy: Absolutely. While Isamu was still alive, I had the opportunity to work not only with Noguchi but with his business manager.