Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America
At first glance, something familiar. Look again.
You’ve seen these forms before—a paper lantern, a walnut table, a wire form suspended in light. What you perhaps haven’t seen is who made them, or what shaped them.
- Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), sculptor and designer
- George Nakashima (1905–1990), architect and furniture designer
- Leo Amino (1911–1989), sculptor
- S. Neil Fujita (1921–2010), graphic designer
- Kay Sekimachi (b. 1926), fiber artist
- Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), sculptor
Noguchi, Nakashima, and Amino had started to build their practices before December 1941, when the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor. The attack brought the United States into World War II, and Japanese and Japanese American families were sent to incarceration camps—a seismic rupture that redirected these artists’ work and careers. Fujita was 20 at the time, and Sekimachi and Asawa just teenagers; some of their earliest art training happened inside the camps. Each of the six followed a different path from there.
The works they created weren’t just gallery objects. They were album covers stacked by the record player, a chair at the dinner table, a lamp lighting the corner of a living room. You might not own the originals. You’ve likely lived with their influence anyway: this is the design language that shaped how a generation furnished, decorated, and saw modern America.
Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America is the first exhibition of its kind to unite the work of these six iconic artists, and to consider the question at the heart of the show: what shaped these objects, and who shaped America because of it?
On view September 20, 2026–January 10, 2027, in the Roberts Gallery.
The Barnes is open from Thursday-Monday 11-5, 10-5 for members.
Adults $30; seniors $28 (tickets good for 2 days); students $5; members free