Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within
Installation, Monograph, Sound Guide, Performances on Takaezu’s sculptures, and album of new works
the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky — a new installation work for single-channel video with audio comprised of recordings of Takaezu’s closed forms with rattles in them.
Sound Guide to the exhibition Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within at The Noguchi Museum
To accompany the exhibition, The Noguchi Museum, in association with Yale University Press, has published a new monograph on Toshiko Takaezu. The volume features new essays and photography of her work.
Closed Form Etudes and Bell Activations — performing on Takaezu’s sculptures
An album featuring the chamber and installation works written by Lanzilotti in honor of the exhibition.
for Toshiko — for violin, cello, and piano. A new work exploring the resonances of Takaezu’s bronze bells.
sending messages — for percussion quartet. A new concert work exploring Takaezu’s clay sculptures with rattles through co-commissioned as part of Sō Percussion’s Flexible Commissions initiative.
On the centennial of the birth of artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011), The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum announces a major touring retrospective and monograph centered on her work and life. This will be the first nationally touring retrospective of Takaezu’s work in twenty years. To coincide with the exhibition the Museum will co-publish a new monograph with Yale University Press. The show was co-curated by Kate Weiner, Glenn Adamson, and myself; and was originally developed by Dakin Hart.
Thematic installations based on exhibitions she presented during her lifetime will include displays inspired by her Star Series, moons, Gaea and Devastation Forest installations, and garden seats. Also included will be an interactive installation and concert program of new works by composer Leilehua Lanzilotti (finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in music) centered on the hidden element of sound in Takaezu’s works.
Toshiko Takaezu was deeply invested in the interiority of her works and often used sound as a tool for activating these unseen spaces. In the 1960s Takaezu began inserting small bits of clay into her closed ceramic forms so they would rattle when handled, becoming, in a way, distinctive musical instruments. They contain hidden soundscapes revealed only through touch. Takaezu described the practice of adding rattles to her closed forms as “sending messages.” In the 1980’s she extended this interest in sound by creating a series of cast bronze bells. The following sound guide, developed by Kanaka Maoli sound artist, composer, and co-curator Leilehua Lanzilotti, invites you to listen and explore Takaezu’s multisensory landscapes.
Exhibition Tour
The Noguchi Museum (March 20–July 28, 2024)
Cranbrook Art Museum (September 11, 2024–January 12, 2025)
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (March 2–May 18, 2025)
Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison (September 8–December 23, 2025)
Honolulu Museum of Art (February 13–July 26, 2026)
