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September 11, 2005
Noguchi Museum Visit
Reflections
This saturday, September 11th, I visited the Noguchi museum in Queens. The only cross town train to Queens from Brooklyn is the G which I have been told is best to avoid. I took the F from Brooklyn, which took me through Manhattan and back east into Queens. All roads here seem to lead through Manhattan like a star network cluster. To get anywhere reliably, you have to go through the center of the star.
The Museum is a still sanctuary situated within an industrial zone. The charm of New York, where the most wonderful thing can be hidden behind a pile of garbage. No one shopping at Cosco or fishing off the back pier had ever heard of the museum.
For me, the most enchanting part of the Museum was the first room and the outside garden. I've always enjoyed buildings that break the lines between inside and outside. Buildings that are turned inside-out, where the outside structure feels like you are inside and the "entering" makes you feel like you are coming outside. The first room, allowing nature to enter from all sides, helped the sculptures to become something greater than museum pieces. Without any barriers between the viewer and the piece (except for the 'do not touch the art' signs) the viewer exists alongside the sculptures.
The piece existing as is, without a roped of barrier, an artist statement or even a name leaves us with just the piece. The artist isn't meeting us half way with an artist statement or an idea of their personal intentions. We are alone with the piece and either it moves us or it doesn't.
With the initial experience in the front room, the rest of the museum was much less inviting. Although the pieces were powerful, they were enclosed within conventional walls, air conditioning and artificial light. Experiencing Noguchi's works as he intended them to be experienced is detrimented by the curators' attempt to preserve the pieces.
Noguchi's furniture on the second floor was very elegant, simple and functional. I especially liked the chair made of two wooden pieces at odds with each other. When an individual sits in the chair, the balancing structure that is the chair is reinforced as the individual is placing pressure on both pieces of wood in opposite directions.
Notes
Noguchi wasn't challenged by marble and moved onto granite and basalt. He sculpted by drilling small holes along the natural cracks of the rock. Then he would insert bamboo dowels and fill them with water. They would slowly expand and split the rock.
Posted by mb2811 at September 11, 2005 10:53 PM