14 September 2026 — 31 August 2027

Isamu Noguchi at Lever House

Off-site presentation at Lever House, 390 Park Avenue (at East 53rd Street), New York, NY 10022 – on view from 14 September 2026 to summer 2027. This extensive public presentation explores Isamu Noguchi’s unrealised sculptural environment for the courtyard, plaza and lobby of Lever House in Manhattan. It highlights the creative dialogue between Noguchi (1904–1988) and the architect Gordon Bunshaft (1909–1990), whose shared ambition to unite art and architecture would have found its earliest and most ambitious expression here. Designed by Bunshaft and completed in 1952, Lever House transformed New York’s skyline as the city’s first commercial office tower with a glass-and-steel curtain wall. From the start, Bunshaft wanted the building’s public courtyard to be more than an architectural forecourt and turned to Noguchi to create an environment in which sculpture and landscape would be inseparable. Working closely with Bunshaft, Noguchi developed two extraordinary proposals inspired by the white sand gardens of Kyoto. The first, conceived as a total work of art, set a pristine marble plane around a shallow reflecting pool from which rose three biomorphic granite forms – abstracted figures of a father, mother and child. The second expanded the idea into a richer landscape animated by water, plants, voids and sculptural interventions, including a homage to Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column. Although the commission was never realised, it became a defining moment in Noguchi’s career and the start of a lasting creative relationship with Bunshaft. The project crystallised ideas that would occupy Noguchi for decades – sculpture as landscape, public space as a place for contemplation and play, and the integration of natural materials into modern architecture – and reflected Bunshaft’s conviction that contemporary art should be an essential element of architecture rather than an afterthought. More than seventy years later, the presentation reunites Noguchi with Lever House through related sculptures, models, drawings and architectural ideas. At its heart is Noguchi’s Model for the Lever Brothers Building, shown in one of Bunshaft’s original lobby vitrines alongside architectural drawings for the commission. Nearby are realised sculptures that show how ideas first explored for Lever House evolved in his later work, including the marble Bird B (1958), directly inspired by the project. The exhibition also gathers important metal sculptures from across his career, such as Noh Musicians (1958) in painted aluminium and Mountains Forming (1982–83) in hot-dipped galvanised steel, as well as Octetra (1965/2021) and Play Sculpture (c. 1965–80), works that function both as abstract sculpture and as children’s play equipment. A special installation of Akari light sculptures illuminates the front corner of the lobby facing Park Avenue, marking the 75th anniversary of Akari in 2026. Presented in collaboration with BGRE, WatermanCLARK and White Cube, the exhibition is organised by Jacob King, who oversees Lever House’s art programme, and curated by Hitomi Iwasaki, Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Matthew Kirsch, Curator and Director of Research, of The Noguchi Museum.

The Noguchi Museum