Salvaged Time: A Field Trip

The Noguchi Museum as seen from the corner of Vernon Boulevard in Queens, New York

Stone has a unique capacity to preserve time. Every chip, curve, and fracture tells the story of its life, or the “congealment of time”, as artist and architect Isamu Noguchi might put it.

The extent of his fascination with stone is perhaps best understood through his Salvaged Time exhibition, currently on display at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, which is grounded in this very concept. We recently made the drive to Queens, New York, to see Noguchi’s work up close.

The open-air Noguchi Museum, designed by the late artist himself, contains over one hundred works, each positioned according to Noguchi’s vision. These projects range in scale and structure, each probing the imprecise boundary between crude rock and evocative art.

What’s made clear by these displays is that as Noguchi developed as an artist, so too did his appreciation for natural beauty. Many of his later sculptures were left unpolished or minimally altered to emphasize the raw materials and speak to the primordial history they contain, as ancient as the Earth itself.

To Noguchi, even scraps from previous efforts had merit of their own. Salvaged Time is a love letter to these odds and ends – a collection of practice stones, jagged fragments, and discarded tools imbued with a second life. A selection of our favorite pieces can be viewed below, arranged in no particular order.

The Salvaged Time exhibit will run until May 15th, 2022. If you miss it, the vast remainder of The Noguchi Museum will still be open year-round, with free admission on the first Friday of each month.

Here is a special sanctuary worthy of a weekend visit. We can’t wait to see what’s on display next.

The Well, 1982

Noguchi’s take on the washbasin (tsukubai) of a Japanese shrine

Core, 1978

A slab of basalt from which Noguchi extracted and repurposed a stone core

Brilliance, 1982

A large basalt sculpture from the museum’s original collection

Humpty Dumpty, 1973

Stainless steel polished in stark contrast to his later pieces

Area 9/10

Part of the museum featuring an assortment of pedestaled displays