A Touring Retrospective of the Life & Art of Toshiko Takaezu Opens at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum

As the new year commences, so does the art world.

Opening this March at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum from March 20 to July 28, 2024, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within celebrates the American artist’s touring retrospective covering twenty years of work where you’ll get to see her signature “closed form” ceramics: a method to explore “the dark space that you can’t see.” These smooth and rounded ceramic forms served as a revitalization and revolution in the artist’s ceramic practices.

The retrospective covers twenty years of Takaezu’s work organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation, and the Takaezu family. Highlighted works include Moons, Garden Seats, Trees, and select monumental works from her late masterpiece, the Star Series. Noguchi’s museum offers indoor and outdoor gallery spaces, making it perfect to host Takaezu’s intimately human hand-scaled sculptures and soaring six-foot sculptures.

Also featured is a broad selection of her vibrant and gestural acrylic paintings and weavings, many of which have rarely been seen, as well as a bronze bell. Sound will also play an important role in this exhibition as many of Takaezu’s closed ceramic forms contain unseen “rattles.”

The retrospective is organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family. It is co-curated by art historian Glenn Adamson, Noguchi Museum Curator Kate Wiener, and composer and sound artist Leilehua Lanzilotti, who is developing a concert program around the show.

In company with her physical pieces, a monograph, also titled, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds, will be present. It was co-published with Yale University Press.