BROOKLYN, NY.- Brooklyn Botanic Garden announces a special fall exhibition, Isamu Noguchi at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a presentation of sculptures by the renowned Japanese American artist. Organized in collaboration with The Noguchi Museum, New York, and curated by the Museum’s senior curator, Dakin Hart, the show includes 18 works by Isamu Noguchi (1904–88) from the Museum’s permanent collection, sited throughout BBG’s outdoor and indoor public gardens. Ranging in date from the mid-1940s to the mid-1980s, the sculptures are on view from September 8 through December 13, 2015.

The centerpiece of Isamu Noguchi at Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a selection of some eight works sited in BBG’s Japanese Hill-andPond Garden. Opened in 1915 and considered the masterpiece of landscape designer Takeo Shiota (1881–1943), this was the first Japanese garden to be created in an American public garden and is one of the oldest and most visited Japanese-inspired gardens outside Japan.

“In Isamu Noguchi, we find a world citizen whose brilliance and creativity transcends cultures and generations,” says Scot Medbury, president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “The fact that Noguchi took his inspiration from nature and created not only sculpture but also gardens makes this exhibition a particularly good fit for BBG, and we are deeply grateful to The Noguchi Museum for its partnership.”

Noguchi Museum director Jenny Dixon states, “The Museum is thrilled to have worked on this project with the esteemed Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A connoisseur of the great Japanese gardens, Noguchi would, I think, have been immensely proud to see his work installed in one of the oldest and most important such gardens in one of the oldest and most important botanical gardens in the United States.”

“Gardens, parks, and playgrounds represented the apex of Noguchi’s ambitions for sculpture: immersive, interactive environments produced by the combined efforts of nature and human beings, often populated by ambiguously useful, sort of architectural elements and designed in the universal language of sensory experience,” adds Mr. Hart.

Among the works placed in the landscape of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden is Rain Mountain (1982–83). The eight-foot-tall, hot-dipped galvanized steel sculpture is installed just outside the north entrance of the garden, serving as an invitation to explore the gently rolling landscape within. Jack-in-the-Box (1984), a large bronze-plate work reminiscent of the children’s toy, and a paper, bamboo, and metal Akari lamp, model 33X (1968), are sited inside the garden’s viewing pavilion. Strange Bird (1945), a bronze semi-abstract work installed on the turtle island, recalls a pair of bronze crane originally located there when the Japanese garden first opened 100 years ago. Sky Mirror (1970), a low-slung basalt piece with a highly polished surface, is located on the small promontory between the waiting pavilion and the pond, angled to catch the morning light. Here, it embodies one of Noguchi’s most important reference points: the yin-yang relationship between water and stone, seeming opposites—solid/liquid, moving/still—that are in fact intimately related in nature, where they shape each other.

The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden and the works displayed there are the center of the exhibition, but the installation extends to other areas of BBG as well. Several of Noguchi’s interpretations of rock formations, for example, are installed along the grassy hillsides near BBG’s Rock Garden; other works are displayed in the C.V. Starr Bonsai Museum, the Desert Pavilion, the Osborne Garden, the Plant Family Collection, Cherry Esplanade, the Native Flora Garden, and Ginkgo Allée.

Isamu Noguchi at Brooklyn Botanic Garden runs concurrently with The Noguchi Museum’s 30th anniversary exhibition Museum of Stones (October 7, 2015–January 10, 2016).

On the occasion of Isamu Noguchi at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, BBG is also presenting Isamu Noguchi: The Transformation of Nature, a Conservatory Gallery exhibition of rare images from The Noguchi Museum’s archives that offer a glimpse of the artist’s vision of public spaces and his work as a garden, park, and playground maker. BBG is also presenting a series of special tours led by expert guides from BBG and The Noguchi Museum, an audio tour by Dakin Hart, a kids’ discovery guide, and classes and other public programs tied to the exhibition and the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden.