Although Isamu Noguchi declared in 1949, “I am not a designer,” the internationally acclaimed artist regularly engaged with the space-shaping possibilities of design, imagining and producing work in architecture, industrial design, ceramics, furniture, lighting, stage sets, and landscape design. In spring 2026, the High will debut the artist’s first design retrospective in nearly twenty-five years, featuring nearly two hundred objects, many never or rarely exhibited, spanning all facets of his creative output.
Isamu Noguchi: “I am not a designer” coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of Playscapes, a bicentennial gift for the city of Atlanta commissioned by the High in collaboration with the City of Atlanta Parks Department and the only one of Noguchi’s playgrounds built in the United States during his lifetime.
Highlights of the exhibition will include sculptural models of potential and unrealized projects, such as the recently rediscovered plaster for Play Mountain (1933); tables and stools designed for manufacturers like Herman Miller and Knoll; and a house model Noguchi designed in collaboration with architect Kazumi Adachi. The exhibition will also feature several large-scale installations, notably the stage set for choreographer Martha Graham’s Seraphic Dialogue (1955), one of Noguchi’s innovative pieces of play equipment, and a commissioned film capturing some of Noguchi’s site-specific plazas and gardens. The diverse, interactive presentation will explore works that embrace function to understand Noguchi as a multinational, interdisciplinary artist and designer who shaped a more open, inclusive world. After Atlanta, the exhibition will travel to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (September 19, 2026-January 3, 2027) and the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York (spring 2027).
