High Museum shines light on artist who protested ‘I’m not a designer’

Curator Monica Obniski has been planning an exhibition centered around Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi for 10 years.

Obnisky, the High Museum’s curator of decorative arts and design, said it made sense to finally realize that dream with Friday’s opening of “Isamu Noguchi: ‘I’m Not a Designer,'” which celebrates a man with a complicated backstory and similarly complicated relationship with the world of art and design. After opening in Atlanta, the exhibition will travel to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the University of Rochester Memorial Museum in New York.

This comprehensive retrospective exhibits more than 200 objects from the artist and designer’s remarkable career, spanning architecture, industrial design, sculpture, gardens, and stage sets for performers such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, George Balanchine, and composer John Cage.

“Isamu Noguchi, Playground, Piedmont Park” was photographed by Atlanta photographer Lucinda Bunnen during the installation of a playscape in Piedmont Park in 1976. (Courtesy of Lucinda Bunnen/High Museum of Art)

But more importantly for Atlanta audiences, this year also marks the 50th anniversary of one of Noguchi’s most important works, Playscapes, located near the intersection of 12th Street and Piedmont Avenue in Piedmont Park.

A playground that stimulates the imagination

Playscapes, graphic and colorful playgrounds designed to encourage discovery and participation, were given to the city in 1976 as a bicentennial gift from the High Museum under Mayor Maynard Jackson. Obniski describes it as an almost utopian time in Atlanta’s history. “There seemed to be a real spirit of experimentation,” Obnisky said. “I had a strong desire to try new things.”

That half-century seemed the perfect time for Obnisky’s Noguchi exhibition to finally take place. “I thought more people needed to know that this artist-designed playground, the only playground ever built in the United States, is actually here in Atlanta. That was the crux of the idea to do this design retrospective,” she said.

Huge scholarship effort

Obniski visited Japan three times to prepare for the exhibition, and traveled throughout the country with the exhibition’s co-curator, Marin R. Sullivan. The exhibition includes the extensive Rizzoli catalog, nearly 400 pages, including 22 essays on Noguchi’s work.

collector and art supporter Lisa Cannon Taylor; At Noguchi Playscape by artist Isamu Noguchi in Piedmont Park. (Courtesy of Lisa Cannon Taylor)

Lisa Cannon Taylor, director of the High Museum and the Piedmont Park Conservation Society, traveled to Japan with Obnisky and a group of Atlanta art patrons as a prelude to the Noguchi retrospective. The group also visited Playscapes with Obnisky. “And most of them have never been there before, even though they know a lot about the arts,” Taylor said. “This shows how undervalued and overdue this treasure is.”

Atlanta may be feverishly digging holes and polishing up the city for the World Cup, but we already have a lot of treasure. “Having this true gem in a publicly accessible public park is a great asset to our city,” said Doug Widener, president and CEO of the Piedmont Park Conservancy.

A sofa and bench designed by Isamu Noguchi and manufactured by Herman Miller from 1948 to 1949. (Courtesy of Efraim Lev-er/High Museum)

Noguchi may be best known to design fans for the iconic biomorphic glass and wood table model IN-50, which he created for Herman Miller in 1947 and became one of the most famous objects of the 20th century. However, his design activities were wide-ranging and profound. He designed ashtrays, kitchen timers, weather vanes, vases, delicious and stylish couches and benches, silverware, baby monitors, and glass plates with cat pictures for the Corning glass manufacturer. Visitors to the exhibition can purchase one of Noguchi’s “Akari” light sculptures, made from handmade Japanese paper, bamboo, and metal, as they exit the gift shop. Akari is also on Obnisky’s shopping list.

The exhibition takes shape

In creating the show, the curators were adamant against using typology or chronology to determine its composition. “The reason we didn’t want both is that if you step back and look at the vast swath of Noguchi’s work over 60 years, themes recur, shapes and forms recur,” Obnisky said.

The Akari (Model 1A) lamp, designed by Isamu Noguchi in 1954, is on display at the High Museum. This lamp is made of natural mulberry paper with black painted panels, a fine bamboo and handprint metal frame, and original electrical components. (Courtesy of High Museum)

Instead, the exhibition is divided into three themes. In Obniski’s words, “making plural things” is “a love story to industrial design…and understanding that design is inherently plural, right?” That part of the exhibit includes furniture, lighting, and even Noguchi’s fashion sketches from Harper’s Bazaar in the 1920s.

The second section, “Elements of Architecture,” delves into the domestic spaces created by Noguchi, who was not a trained architect. Some of them noticed, some didn’t.

The third section of the retrospective, “Shaping Spaces,” focuses on civic spaces, playgrounds, fountains, and other public-facing works. Part of that section includes a film commissioned by High from architecture studio Spirit of Space, featuring three of Noguchi’s important public spaces: Hart Plaza in Detroit, California Scenario in Costa Mesa, and the UNESCO Gardens in Paris.

The UNESCO Gardens of Paris (1956-1958) were designed by Isamu Noguchi. (Courtesy of Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum/High Museum)

The premise of “I’m Not a Designer” is Noguchi’s stated resistance to being called a designer. Obniski points out that while Japanese people virtually recognize Noguchi as a designer, in America, where binary oppositions are preferred, creators are often categorized as followers of either the museum or the market.

“Frankly, like all mid-20th century American artists, if I wanted to be taken seriously, I didn’t want to be seen as aligned with commercial interests,” Obnisky said. Despite being a design curator at High, she says she has no skin in the game and encourages viewers to leave the exhibit with their own assessment of Noguchi.

Noguchi sketches the design of the Akari lamp in Japan, circa 1951. (Courtesy of Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/High Museum)