Artist Isamu Noguchi once stated, "My best things have never been built." At the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, you can decide if he was right.
Sketches, models, and blueprints for more than a dozen unrealized works are currently on display in Noguchi's New York, a new exhibit that explores the city as it was, as it is, and as Noguchi dreamed it could be. Alongside these unrealized projects, the exhibit celebrates works that did come to life and others that have since been lost. Taken together, these pieces express Noguchi's vision of New York City and his sense of himself as a New Yorker "bitten by some kind of an idealism."
Photo by Nicholas Knight
Untapped New York Members recently got to visit the exhibit on an after-hours tour led by curator Kate Wiener. On this evening adventure, one unrealized project that stood out was Noguchi's never-built sculpture for the 1939 World's Fair.
The large sculpture was one of several proposals Noguchi made for the fair. It would have been an integral part of architect Percival Goodman's unrealized Labor Pavilion. Representing the strength of union labor, the piece took the form of a massive, muscled worker appearing to hold up the building on his shoulders. At Noguchi's New York, you can see a 3D-printed model of Goodman's design and a 1938 plaster model of Noguchi's sculpture.
Photo by Nicholas Knight
Noguchi also worked with artists Philip Guston and Harold Lehman to create murals for the 300-foot fin that runs along the top of Goodman's structure; however, no extant documentation of those murals has been found.
One of Noguchi's World's Fair proposals did become a reality! Rather than representing the power of the worker, this sculpture represented the power of a Ford V-8 engine. Planted outside the Ford Exposition and encircled by the "Road to Tomorrow," Chassis Fountain was made of white magnesite stone. It depicted various car "guts", including an engine, connecting rod, differential, and wheel with water falling into a retaining fender.
Other unrealized projects you can explore in this exhibit include playground plans vehemently rejected by Robert Moses, a playscape for the House of Great Apes at the Bronx Zoo, a subway mural, a war memorial, and much more. Get a sneak peek in our Instagram reel below!
