No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75 — The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, New York, 4 November 2026 – 5 September 2027

In 1951 Isamu Noguchi visited Gifu, a town known for its paper lanterns, and came away with an idea: to reimagine the traditional Japanese chochin. He kept the handmade, collapsible structure and gave it new shapes, an electric bulb and a modern wire base. He called the results Akari, the Japanese word for light, which to him evoked both illumination and weightlessness. Over the following three decades he produced more than 200 distinct models. Seventy-five years after the first ones, the museum he founded in Long Island City marks the anniversary with No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75, from 4 November 2026 to 5 September 2027.

The title is Noguchi’s own insistence: “Akari is no ordinary light.” He understood each model as a luminous sculpture that comes to life in how it is shown and in its relation to people and to the room it stands in. The exhibition takes him at his word. It traces the many contexts in which he presented Akari during his career, placing them in dialogue with sculptures in stone, metal and clay, in settings that run from intimate domestic interiors to monumental installations.

Several of the displays draw on key historical presentations: the debut of Akari at a tea ceremony at the Eames House in 1951, and their presence in Noguchi’s solo presentation at the Venice Biennale in 1986. The exhibition is curated by Kate Wiener, Curator, and Matthew Kirsch, Curator and Director of Research.

Practical details

• Dates: 4 November 2026 – 5 September 2027
• Where: The Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, New York 11106, USA
• Opening hours: Wednesday to Sunday 10am–5pm; closed Monday and Tuesday
• Admission: general $16; seniors (65+) $6; students with ID $6; free on the first Friday of every month
• Information: noguchi.org

Cultural Heritage Online lists this exhibition because the Akari are a case of a craft tradition, the Gifu lantern, carried into modern design without being erased, and because the museum presenting them is the artist’s own, built around his work.