In the first decades of his career, Isamu Noguchi often settled for discounted and offcast stone specimens found at suppliers along the East River, instilling a fundamental regard for the quirks and imperfections in individual stones that carried over to the coveted Italian marble and Japanese granite he was able to procure later. The symbolic aspects of stone’s sedimentary make-up—its “congealment” of time, as Noguchi phrased it—appealed to him, as did the visual evidence of human contact from the quarrying process. Noguchi considered the full life of a stone in his sculpture, leading him to find expressive potential in repurposed fragments and other remainders.

Curated by Matthew Kirsch, this installation in The Noguchi Museum’s Area 6 surveys some of Noguchi’s recontextualizing impulses and also encourages visitors to look anew at details found throughout the Museum, including salvaged Japanese pine bases, reworked core pieces, offcut ends, Aji granite practice stones, slab pedestals, and his series of Variations on a Millstone.