Isamu Noguchi purchases the building at 32-37 Vernon Boulevard, which formerly housed the Astoria Photo Engravers Supply Company and which will eventually become his museum. He adapts it for use as a studio warehouse and begins rehabilitating its courtyard space into a garden.

Noguchi renames his existing Akari Foundation, which he established in 1971, as The Isamu Noguchi Foundation, Inc., as he begins preparing for the establishment of a museum of his work.

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation purchases the service station that occupies the property adjacent to 32-37 Vernon Boulevard. With the entire block under his control, Noguchi begins working with his friend and collaborator, architect Shoji Sadao, on creating the museum.

Noguchi produces a series of twenty-six galvanized steel sculpture editions with Gemini G.E.L., anticipating that proceeds from their sales would support the museum he is creating.

The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum opens by appointment.

May 11
The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum officially opens to the public. A seasonal museum, it is open two days a week from April to November.

The Museum’s catalogue, The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, is first published, featuring writing by Isamu Noguchi highlighting the works he selected and installed in his museum.

The Museum’s education program is established, including tours for students and individuals with disabilities. Touch tours continue to be offered today to visitors who are blind or have low vision.

December 30
Isamu Noguchi dies in New York. A memorial service is held at the Museum in 1989.

The Museum makes its first major loan, to The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, for the exhibition Isamu Noguchi Retrospective 1992.

The Museum becomes the U.S. distributor for Noguchi’s Akari light sculptures, ensuring proceeds from their sale support the Museum’s programming and activities.

The Museum launches the Isamu Noguchi Catalogue Raisonné project, an ongoing research endeavor dedicated to documenting Noguchi’s artistic practice.

November 19 
The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in Japan officially opens to the public, with works on permanent loan from the collection of The Noguchi Museum in New York.

The Museum celebrates the 50th anniversary of Akari—continuously handcrafted from 1951 by Ozeki & Co. in Japan—with an exhibition of the light sculptures in the Museum’s galleries.

The Museum closes for a two-and-a-half-year renovation to stabilize and update the building and expand public access to the facilities. The building is made accessible through the addition of an elevator and ramps, an education studio is created, and heating and cooling in the galleries are introduced, enabling the Museum to remain open year-round.

The Museum works to expand the production of designs that Noguchi intended for manufacture, with new and renewed licensing agreements with Vitra, Knoll, and Herman Miller.

February
The Museum opens a temporary space in Sunnyside, Queens, where it presents exhibitions from its collection while its building is being renovated.

Spring
The Museum launches its first teen program, Making Your Mark, to engage Queens high school students in an exploration of issues in their own world as they experience the art and ideas of Isamu Noguchi.

Fall
The Museum launches Art for Families, inviting children and adults from Queens to experience together the work and environment created by Isamu Noguchi through gallery talks and art-making activities. As part of the pilot, the Museum organizes a series of family workshops in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art—then temporarily located in Queens (MoMA QNS).

February 23
The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum is chartered as a museum by the New York State Education Department and receives its 501(c)(3) designation. The Isamu Noguchi Foundation, Inc. is consolidated into this new entity.

June
The Museum reopens in Long Island City after the extensive first phase of its renovation, becoming a year-round and ADA-accessible facility for the first time in its history.

The Museum presents the first temporary exhibition in its newly renovated building: Isamu Noguchi: Sculptural Design, an internationally touring exhibition designed by Robert Wilson and organized by the Vitra Design Museum.

October 28
Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, celebrating the centennial of Noguchi’s birth. The exhibition later travels to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution.

May 12
The Museum holds its first annual benefit event, a concert and dinner with Philip Glass.

March 26
The large Ailanthus tree in the garden is removed as it is dying. It was the only plant in the garden that Noguchi kept after purchasing the property, and the only element in the garden he did not bring in.

July 17
Isamu Noguchi: Modern Master is presented at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England, becoming the first retrospective of Noguchi’s work in Europe.

May 
The Museum completes its second phase of renovations, which completes the structural stabilization of the building first started in 2001. It also creates an improved visitor entrance and adds climate control in the floating galleries, enabling the Museum to borrow works for special exhibitions that it could not previously.

June 13
The Museum begins an annual concert series with Bang on a Can, a Brooklyn-based performing arts organization, which continues today.

November 17
The digital Isamu Noguchi Catalogue Raisonné is launched, becoming the authoritative resource for research and general interest around Noguchi’s artistic practice.

May 13
The Museum presents the first annual Isamu Noguchi Awards to Lord Norman Foster and Hiroshi Sugimoto at its spring benefit. The awards continue to be conferred each year, recognizing highly accomplished individuals who share Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, unbounded imagination, and uncompromising commitment to creativity.

The Museum commissions photographers Tina Barney and Stephen Shore to capture the Museum and its visitors for its 30th anniversary. The culminating work is published as The Noguchi Museum | A Portrait (Phaidon, 2015).

October 7
Museum of Stones opens at the Museum, becoming the first exhibition in the Museum’s history to insert the work of contemporary artists into the original Noguchi installation.

July
The Museum receives accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums.

November 19
Museum launches the online Isamu Noguchi Archive, enabling online visitors from around the world to access over 60,000 items from Noguchi’s personal archive.

The Museum launches virtual programs—including Seen and Unseen, Drawing from a Distance, Akari in Schools, Archives Deep Dives, and a range of digital features—during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

Fall
The weeping cherry tree in the garden dies. The Museum plants a new weeping cherry in its place.

November 16
The block of 33rd Street between the Museum entrance and the Noguchi Studio is named Isamu Noguchi Way, in honor of Noguchi’s life and legacy in Queens.

November 17
The Museum publishes the Multimedia Collection, marking the first major expansion of the Isamu Noguchi Archive. Hundreds of audio and video files generated from digitized film reels, videotapes, and audiocassettes are made available online for the first time.

May
The Museum celebrates its 40th anniversary, launching a year of exhibitions, programs, and publications that reflect on its history and growth.