Noguchi Museum Exhibition Explores Artist's Unbuilt New York Playgrounds

The Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York, presents 'Noguchi’s New York,' an exhibition examining Isamu Noguchi’s unrealized visions for the city’s built environment, on view through September 26. The show highlights Noguchi’s 1951 proposal for a playground near the United Nations, which was rejected by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who compared it to a 'rabbit warren' and built his own playground on the site, now named Robert Moses Playground. The exhibition includes models of Noguchi’s Play Mountain (1932) and Contoured Playground (1941), both rejected, as well as his collaboration with architect Louis Kahn for Riverside Park in the 1960s, shelved under Mayor John Lindsay. It also features busts of Noguchi’s creative circle, including Buckminster Fuller, and a timeline of his built projects in New York, such as the Sunken Garden at Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza. Animations by Eastend Western show children playing on Noguchi’s proposals. Despite never building a playground in New York, Noguchi realized playscapes globally, including Moerenuma Park in Sapporo and Piedmont Park’s Playscapes in Atlanta, the latter commemorated by the High Museum of Art with the exhibition 'Isamu Noguchi: I am not a designer.'