“You know, one shifts—I do—backwards and forwards. Sometimes I think I’m part of this world of today. Sometimes I feel that maybe I belong in history or in prehistory, or that there’s no such thing as time. … If you [can] escape from that time constraint, then the whole world … is someplace where you belong,” –Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi made these provocative remarks on the nature of time during a 1972 interview filmed in New York City. This was not the first time the artist had reflected on this subject, and it would not be the last. Time is a thematic undercurrent seen throughout his practice, uniting work that spanned a range of materials and disciplines—from his steel and stone sculptures, to his designs for playgrounds, furniture, and dance sets.

Noguchi’s fascination with time was bound up with his broader search for belonging. As a biracial artist, Noguchi felt pulled between the cultures of the United States and Japan and often described himself as “belonging everywhere and nowhere.” Noguchi channeled these feelings into work that transcended social, artistic, and temporal boundaries. In his attempts to escape such constraints, he forged a hybrid practice through which he could more freely exist, explore, and belong.

Across his varied works, visitors can find Noguchi engaging with time on many levels—human, geological, and cosmic—and in varied forms: as a physical force that erodes material, as the fabric of tradition and history, and as a limitation to be challenged. Viewed as a whole, Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time at The Clark Art Institute invites visitors to join Noguchi in his timeless search for belonging and to find new meaning in the blurred spaces that exist between the past, present, and future.