In an interview from 1986, Isamu Noguchi described the newly-created Museum as "a place to reflect and see an alternative existence." He noted the need to create areas "not all gobbled up by industry or speeding traffic." This year, Community Day celebrates slowing down and focusing, and explores the contemplative opportunities offered by this special museum space. 

Community Day Programming Includes:

Data Garden: Personified

How is energy channeled into forms of creative expression? Is the creative force that inspires a human to write poetry or music the same as that which inspires a plant to grow in a particular way? Data Garden will explore these ideas and more with PERSONIFIED, a computer interface that translates the conductive energy of humans into music. 

Data Garden is a journal, record label, and events producer encouraging the discovery of electronic music through the windows of history, science, and community. 

The Art of Mindfulness

A series of 30 to 45 minutes presentations will explore methods for slowing down and focusing. These presentations include:

Annelisse Fifi, an educator at the Museum, will lead a meditation for parents and children, exploring how to find contemplative and meditative spaces as a family. 

Cary Babor, Manhattan-based writer, editor, and radio producer specializing in health and fitness, will speak about how mindfulness works and lead visitors in a short breathing exercise that can be done anywhere at any time.

Rikki Asher, Director of Art and Development at Queens College, will explore drawing as a tool for slowing down and looking carefully, and as a way to understand interconnectedness. 

Transform the Education Room

Visitors of all ages are invited to contribute to a collaborative work of installation art in the Education Room. For this activity, participants are invited to think about what makes places special. 

Slow Art

Choose from among three experiences, curated by hosts from the local Long Island City community, in which participants spend ten or more minutes with each work of art. Participating hosts are Magda Dejose, Liz Ferguson, and Sarah Whitt with Marco Antonio Castro from Flux Factory.

Later, join your host at 5:00pm for a discounted drink at The Strand on Broadway, in Long Island City to discuss the experience. Pre-register here. 

We Invite You To...

Visitors will be provided with a handout including a series of prompts which will encourage experimenting with ways to transform the viewing experience. 

Drawing Activity

Visitors can contribute a postcard-sized drawing to our growing collections of visitor created submissions, which are shared on the Noguchi Museum's Flickr page. 

Rename Community Day

We invite visitors to rename our annual Community Day. Submissions are eligible to win a tour for a group of up to fifteen people. 

On the second Sunday of each month, The Noguchi Museum offers public programming at 3:00PM, unless otherwise noted. Programming is free with museum admission. On Sunday, April 14, the Museum will host Peter Carlson in a Curator's talk, to be held in the education room.  

Through creating a series of editioned works for Gemini G.E.L., Isamu Noguchi developed a relationship with Peter Carlson who he came to greatly respect as a fabricator. As principal of Carlson Arts, LLC, Carlson continues to develop new production techniques and works with a number of contemporary artists. In conversation with Associate Curator Matt Kirsch, we hope to explore Noguchi's ideas and imagine how they might be developed now. 

In conjunction with the exhibition Hammer, Chisel, Drill: Noguchi’s Studio Practice, The Noguchi Museum will host three Artist-in-Residence Weekends.  Each of these artists work with similar tools and materials as Noguchi did and will demonstrate their process. These residencies expand the Museum’s Second Sunday series, featuring demonstrations from 11:00am to 1:00pm and 3:00pm to 5:00pm on Saturday, and an artist talk on Sunday at 3:00pm. 

Paul Discoe

California based Japanese master builder and Zen Buddhist teacher, Paul Discoe will demonstrate the art of woodworking to include traditional Japanese joinery techniques and create a traditional Japanese wood-post-in-a-stone-footing. He will explain why these materials- favored by Noguchi throughout his prolific career- is an important motif in Japanese culture. 

Please visit Paul Discoe's website for more information on his body of work. 

“Poetry in the Pedestrian”

Agelio Batle is a San Francisco based Sculptor and artist with a background in biology that has largely influenced the investigative nature of his work. In working with ordinary materials and everyday artifacts, he attempts to extract the extraordinary. Using maps, pencil lead, globes, old dictionaries and the like, Batle finds inspiration and “epiphany in mundane materials.”

In 2007, Batle created a series of custom, functional graphite objects exclusively for the Noguchi Museum. This Second Sunday, Batle will present the process of his graphite object creation. Each object is created from natural graphite and bonded with smudge-resistant compounds under intense pressure. The object is then finished using traditional burnishing and polishing techniques. 

For more on this artist, please visit his website.