The Noguchi Museum - A Portrait, by Tina Barney and Stephen Shore: A Portrait, by Tina Barney and Stephen Shore

by Stephen Shore (Photographer), Tina Barney (Photographer), Isamu Noguchi (Artist)

Overview

The celebrated New York museum captured by two of today's most respected photographers, Tina Barney and Stephen Shore.

The Noguchi Museum provides a unique perspective on the artwork of Isamu Noguchi and its setting in the Noguchi Museum through the eyes of renowned photographers Stephen Shore and Tina Barney. Noguchi, a modernist sculptor and designer, founded and designed the museum for the specific purpose of exhibiting his works. The 1920s-era industrial space in Long Island City, Queens, thus became the first and only museum in the US to be designed by a living artist for the artist's own work.

Shore has photographed individual works on view at the museum, documenting them in new and surprising ways; and Barney has photographed visitors at the museum and its events, capturing something of the spatial experience of the museum. These new photographs comprise a beautiful object that pays tribute to the museum and artwork while highlighting the skill and eye of these two photographers.

This is the only book that focuses on the unique dynamic between the museum's artworks, architecture, and visitors and the museum celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2015, coinciding with publication.

The book includes a foreword by the museum director, Jenny Dixon, and a selection of archival images documenting the transformation of the museum-many published here for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780714870281
Publisher:	Phaidon Press
Publication date:	09/28/2015
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	12.70(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Stephen Shore is one of the most influential photographers living today. His photographs from the 1970s, taken on road trips across America, established him as a pioneer in the use of colour in art photography. He has been director of the Photography Program at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, since 1982. In 1971 Shore became the first living photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His photographs have since been exhibited internationally, including the Tate Modern's first exhibition of photography 'Cruel and Tender' in 2003. His work has been collected by museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Tina Barney is an American fine art photographer. She studied photography in the 1970s at the Sun Valley Center for Arts and Humanities and completed workshops with Duane Michals and Nathan Lyons, among other prominent photographers. She is the recipient of a Lucie Award for Achievement in Portraiture and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Artist's Fellowship. Barney's work is included in numerous public collections, including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Art Institute of Chicago; the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Editorial Reviews

10/19/2015
This illustrious art book celebrates the Noguchi Museum in its 30th year, by chronicling the way in which "it is currently experienced." Located in Queens, N.Y., the museum was founded in 1985 by Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), an influential Japanese-American artist who worked in a variety of media and forms including drawing, sculpture, and design. The Noguchi Museum was the first U.S. institution founded by a living artist to showcase his own work. In an introduction, museum director Jenny Dixon describes Noguchi's "poetic minimalist aesthetic" as "combining an attention to craftsmanship with a modernist sensibility." His museum, as deftly presented in these pages by photographers Barney and Shore, mirrors those virtues. Many of the museum's art pieces and spaces seem raw, yet they exude a refinement evoking Noguchi's philosophy of design. The acute photographic storytelling simultaneously captures the beauty of the art as well as the ambiance of the museum in action, detailing visitors engaging with the artwork. One of the most endearing images shows a toddler and her mother crouching in one of the galleries, inspecting a group of sculptures, while a young woman lounges on the floor writing or sketching. This scene captures the Noguchi Museum's "sense of sanctuary" and its "intimate, even quirky, charm." This collection handily provides an intimate window through which to experience this unique museum. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Of all the places in the city you can go to recharge your spiritual batteries, one of the loveliest and least well known is the sculpture garden at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens." —The New York Times on the Noguchi Museum

"Isamu Noguchi was a man of dualities: West and East, coarse and refined, optimist and realist." —NYmag.com on Isamu Noguchi

"As a recorder of the fleeting but highly charged moments in the everyday, the weight of Shore's influence is undeniable." —Creative Review on Stephen Shore

"Shore's spatial explorations and Barney's intimate portraits celebrate Noguchi himself, who combined abstract sculptural concerns with sensitivity to people and emotions" —Metropolis

"A new book of photographs by Tina Barney and Stephen Shore focuses on the museum and its visitors as well as the quiet power of the artist's oeuvre" —Wall Street Journal Off Duty

"an elegant commemoration" —Surface

From the Publisher