Bert Winther-Tamaki will explore the specific sculptural initiatives at various points along Isamu Noguchi’s career—such as his portrait busts of New Yorkers in the 1920s, Japanese clay work in the 1950s, design of plazas for postwar American cities, and the rock abstractions of his late years—and look at them as a laboratory for mediating personal and cultural affiliations that were alternatively inspired and inhibited by social and ideological forces such as modernism, nationalism, exoticism, and universalism.

Bert Winther-Tamaki is associate professor of Art History at the University of Califonia at Irvine and co-author of the exhibition catalogue, Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: a close embrace of the earth.