FROM PLASTER TO STONE: SPECIAL EXHIBITION AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AT THE NOGUCHI MUSEUM
Department:
Exhibitions
The special exhibition From Plaster to Stone focuses on Isamu Noguchi’s creative process, illuminated through some forty-five plaster maquettes for large sculptures by the artist. Installed in a gallery with two finished sculptures, as well as with photographs of the remaining completed works, the maquettes illuminate the ways in which Noguchi was simultaneously faithful to his original ideas and flexible in responding to the unpredictable nature of stone. Each of the maquettes relates to a sculpture or an element of a large-scale project from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Some of the maquettes include Noguchi’s own penciled instructions to the fabricators of the works, guiding them in achieving various effects and indicating combinations of different types of stone. Also evident on a number of maquettes are small embedded metal points, remnants of a 3-D pantograph used by Noguchi to enlarge the scale of the work for the finished sculptures.
