Community Programs & Partnerships
Community Programs
The Noguchi Museum offers a variety of programs for community members. For full details about upcoming programs, please visit our calendar.
Community Programs include:
Kite Flight, offered each spring in collaboration with Socrates Sculpture Park. This program, which takes place at Socrates Sculpture Park, engages community members in creating and flying their own kites.
The Museum's annual Community Day includes free admission and activities and performances for all ages.
The First Friday of every month, the Museum offers pay-what-you-wish admission and hosts film screenings and Center of Attention, an extended conversation around a single work of art. This event also features a cash bar.
During Summer 2012, the Museum invited visitors to share visual responses to the question, "How did you get to The Noguchi Museum?" Submitted responses can be found here. During Fall 2012, in conjunction with the exhibition Hammer, Chisel, Drill, the Museum invites visitors to consider what tools they use in their own work. Visitors to the Museum are offered a selection of papers and colored pencils, and aksed to complete a submission form to accompany their drawing.
The Museum also offers Second Sunday public programs and Open Studio drop-in programs.
Community Partnerships
The Noguchi Museum is committed to developing strong relationships with local organizations. In this spirit, the Museum partners with community-based organizations to offer workshops that meet the needs of each group of participants.
The Museum will consider inquiries regarding partnerships with Queens-based organizations such as community centers, libraries, senior centers, and hospitals. Program costs are variable and subsidies may be available. For more information, or if you are interested in discussing ways in which The Noguchi Museum might collaborate with your organization, please call 718.204.7088, extension 205 or email education@noguchi.org.
Below is a list of selected current and recent program partners.
Institute for Community Living
In Spring 2012, The Noguchi Museum began a partnership with ICL. For Fall 2012, this partnership focuses on a single ICL site, the Borden Avenue Veterans Residence in Long Island City. Each month veterans visit the Museum for a tour and workshop, focusing on a new theme and medium each visit.
Queens Library Family Literacy Program at Ravenswood Family Center
The Ravenswood Family Center provides English Language classes, literacy support, and other services to immigrant families.
In Spring 2010, inconjunction with the Center's job readiness training program, The Noguchi Museum worked with ten women interested in making and selling pinatas. During this program, participants looked at Isamu Noguchi's approach to designing lamps and furniture, and consider new and often abstract approaches to pinata design. View photographs of the pinatas finished here.
During Fall 2011, families looked at garden-related proposals on view in the exhibition Civic Action, and created their own sculptural garden holders. View photographs of the final gardens here.
Project Luz
Project Luz is a photography program run by educator Sol Aramendi. Its goal is to empower recent immigrants through photography as Sol explains in this video clip from October 2012. During Fall / Winter 2012, in conjunction with the exhibition Hammer, Chisel, Drill, The Noguchi Museum is hosting a Spanish-lanuage photography class in which participants photograph people at work, and their spaces and tools. Selected photographs will be on view at The Noguchi Museum February-April 2013.
Jacob Riis Settlement House Senior Center
During Winter 2012, The Noguchi Museum collaborated with nine senior citizens from the Jacob Riis Settlement House, to consider the Long Island City waterfront. George Trakas, one of the artists featured in the Museum's exhibition Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City, met with seniors to consider the relationshiop between art and political activism, and to discuss his vision for the local waterfront. Seniors then studied both painting and drawing, and used these technical skills to communicate their own visions for the waterfront.
