The Barnes Foundation Presents Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America

First exhibition to explore how Japanese American artists transformed the aesthetic landscape of postwar America

On view September 20, 2026–January 10, 2027
Press Preview: Wednesday, September 16, 9:30–11:30 am

Philadelphia, PA, April 27, 2026—In fall 2026, the Barnes Foundation will present Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America, a groundbreaking exhibition that reconsiders 20th-century art and design within the context of Japanese and Japanese American incarceration during World War II and the broader history of Asian America. This exhibition will be the first to explore how this tumultuous era of Japanese American history formed a foundation for modern art and design in the United States. Conceived and curated by Cindy Kang, curator at the Barnes, this exhibition is on view in the Roberts Gallery from September 20, 2026, through January 10, 2027.

Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

Beauty and craftsmanship are hallmarks of midcentury Japanese American art and design. From Isamu Noguchi’s iconic furniture to Ruth Asawa’s inventive wire sculptures, Japanese American artists transformed the aesthetic landscape of postwar America. Yet beneath this artistry lies a shared history marked by forced relocation and incarceration during World War II. Confronting this difficult past, Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America offers a recontextualization of the work of influential 20th-century artists and designers through the lens of 1940s Japanese American incarceration.

“We are proud to present Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America, an exhibition celebrating the work of six renowned Japanese American artists and designers and their lasting impact on US culture,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes. “This poignant exhibition is the third in our series of exhibitions and installations this year, all designed to offer a powerful exploration of the complex and multifaceted American experience.”

The exhibition chronologically and thematically juxtaposes sculpture and designs by two generations of artists affected by forced relocation and incarceration in the United States, including sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi (1904–1990), architect and furniture designer George Nakashima (1905–1990), sculptor Leo Amino (b. Taiwan, 1911–1989), graphic designer S. Neil Fujita (b. Territory of Hawaii, 1921–2010), fiber artist and weaver Kay Sekimachi (b. 1926), and sculptor Ruth Asawa (1926–2013). The elder generation (Noguchi, Nakashima, and Amino) all established their practices before Japanese and Japanese Americans were sent to camps in February 1942, changing the direction of their careers. The younger generation (Fujita, Sekimachi, and Asawa) experienced their early artistic training in the camps through impromptu schools organized by incarcerated artists.

As these six artists reestablished their lives in the postwar era, they turned to creating domestic objects or small-scale works in dialogue with craft and design. Working during the precarious period of Japanese resettlement across the United States, these artists contended with emergent racial pressures and stereotypes that provide a relevant context for understanding their careers and artistic choices. The exhibition considers their work, materials, and techniques in the context of postwar Japanese American experiences, including racialization. By featuring objects that were part of midcentury American life—from coffee tables to album covers, chairs to wallpaper designs—the exhibition demonstrates that Asian American history is not separate from mainstream America but rather part of people’s daily lives through these objects in their homes.

“From Noguchi’s Akari light sculptures to Asawa’s suspended wire lobes, the contributions of mid-20th-century Japanese American artists helped define the look and feel of modern America,” says Cindy Kang. “The exhibition will examine the artists’ collective experiences and their understudied impact on American design.”

This exhibition includes sculpture, fiber art, furniture, and graphic design. Highlights include:

• Isamu Noguchi, My Arizona (1943): Made after Noguchi returned to New York from the Poston camp in Arizona, this sculpture reflects on the artist’s seven months of incarceration. Although he entered the camp voluntarily in an attempt to improve the conditions there, once inside he became a prisoner like the rest of the Japanese Americans. Evoking a topographic view of the desert landscape, the stark white base features enigmatic concavities and protrusions, including a magenta square of plexiglass suspended above the upper left quadrant. The warm hue it casts onto the white support perhaps conveys how, as Noguchi described, “the hot sun shines interminably” in Arizona.
• George Nakashima, Milk House Coffee Table (1944): This object was one of the first significant pieces Nakashima created after he left the Minidoka incarceration camp and moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania. He set up a rudimentary workshop in the milk house on his employer’s farm and made the table from teak planks that his close friend, the artist Morris Graves, had kept for him in Washington state. This object—made from wood that was shipped from his home state across the country and named after the place where he began to re-establish himself—tangibly and poetically embodies Nakashima’s journey of displacement and resettlement in the postwar period.
• Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.272, Hanging Seven-Lobed Continuous Interlocking Form with Spheres in the First and Sixth Lobes) (c. 1954): Asawa’s signature multi-lobed wire sculptures, like this virtuosic example, are embedded not only within the lineage of the Bauhaus and Euro-American modernism but also within Asian American history. Scholars have connected Asawa’s choice of wire as a medium and her painstaking process of looping and coiling to both her experience incarcerated behind barbed wire and broader histories of Asian labor in the United States. Her family was part of a wave of Japanese immigrants who came in the early 20th century to work on farms, and Asawa grew up doing the repetitive, cyclical chores of agricultural labor. The roots of Asawa’s innovative suspended sculptures thus extend beyond her education at Black Mountain College.
• S. Neil Fujita, Album cover design for the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out (Columbia Records) (1959): As art director at Columbia Records, Fujita defined the look of jazz in America in the 1950s with his abstract album covers that drew from the work of modern European artists along with personal influences. One of the covers he was most proud of was Dave Brubeck’s Time Out. The quartet had just returned from a tour of Asia and, as Fujita recounted, “I had recently returned from the service with armed forces intelligence in the Western Pacific and I had been through East Asia, the Philippines, and Calcutta, so I borrowed some colors and shapes that seemed to go with the mood.”
• Kay Sekimachi, Kunoyuki (c. 1968): To weave Kunoyuki, Sekimachi used undyed, clear monofilament, a nylon product manufactured by DuPont. Experimenting with industrial materials unencumbered by art historical or cultural associations provided her a sense of artistic freedom. Sekimachi was particularly interested in exploring the effects of transparency in these diaphanous hangings. A ghostly form that sways and turns with air currents, Kunoyukiis a human-sized object that the viewer can both encounter as a bodily presence and see through completely. This duality of visibility and invisibility resonated with the racial consciousness of a fomenting Asian American movement in the late 1960s.
• Leo Amino, Refractional #47 (1969): Refractional #47 consists of five separate small objects. Their intimate scale invites the viewer to hold them in their hands and manipulate them to see the way light passes through the various layers of color. Working out of his home studio, Amino eschewed the monumentality of many of his contemporaries’ work, instead revaluing the minor and the modest as part of an intentional artistic position. His innovative use of plastics places his work in dialogue with science and industry, and particularly within the history of plastics developed by the US military during World War II.
  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) worked across the mediums of sculpture, landscape architecture, dance, and industrial design over a six-decade career. The son of a Japanese poet and an American writer, he grew up between the United States and Japan. During World War II, Noguchi was exempt from Japanese incarceration as a resident of New York; nevertheless, he voluntarily entered the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona to help organize artistic programs and design recreational spaces. This experience affected much of his work in the postwar period, from his designs for the Martha Graham Dance Company to his organic abstract sculpture. Among his iconic designs still in production are his Akari paper lanterns developed with the Ozeki Lantern Co. in Gifu, Japan, and the IN-50 coffee table produced by Herman Miller.

George Nakashima (1905–1990) was a furniture designer and architect whose work was inspired by traditional Japanese and vernacular American design. Born in Spokane, Washington, to Japanese immigrant parents, Nakashima had already established his furniture workshop in Seattle when he was incarcerated and sent to Minidoka, Idaho. He was able to leave camp with the sponsorship of a former employer and set up a workshop in New Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1944. A leader of American studio craft furniture, Nakashima championed the natural characteristics of wood, creating designs that highlighted supposed flaws such as burls, knots, and cracks. He also worked with industrial furniture companies like Knoll.

Leo Amino (1911–1989) was a sculptor who pioneered the use of plastic as an artistic medium. He was born in Taiwan, then under Japanese colonial rule, and immigrated to the United States in 1929. He studied sculpture at the American Artists’ School in New York with Chaim Gross and initially worked primarily in wood. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Amino worked as a translator for the Navy for the duration of the conflict. Drawing on new synthetic materials developed during the war, Amino began to use plastics as a sculptural medium in 1945. In 1965, he developed his signature Refractional series, which used layers of colored cast polyester resin. He was an influential teacher at both Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, and Cooper Union in New York, where he taught from 1952 to 1977.

Sadamitsu Neil Fujita (1921–2010) was a graphic designer and painter who brought an avant-garde sensibility to some of the most iconic album covers and book jackets of the mid-20th century.Fujita grew up on a sugar plantation camp in Waimea, Hawaii, and moved to Los Angeles to attend Chouinard Art Institute in 1940. He was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, during World War II, where he worked as an art director for the camp newspaper. He enlisted in the US Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team to leave the camp and stayed in the army until 1947, when he returned to art school. Fujita was subsequently hired by an advertising agency in Philadelphia and then became art director at Columbia Records before founding his own design firm. Among his most iconic designs is the logotype for Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel The Godfather.

Kay Sekimachi (b. 1926) is a fiber artist and weaver based in Berkeley, California, where she was born and raised. Incarcerated as a teenager in Topaz, Utah, where she attended art classes, Sekimachi discovered weaving after the war at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco. She subsequently studied with German émigré weaver Trude Guermonprez there as well as with American textile artist Jack Lenor Larsen at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine. Sekimachi is best known for her three-dimensional monofilament hangings and her intricate woven boxes and bowls.

Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) was an artist, educator, and arts advocate in San Francisco. Born in Norwalk, California, to Japanese immigrant farmworkers, Asawa was a teenager when she was incarcerated in Rohwer, Arkansas, during World War II. After the war, she enrolled at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, where she studied under R. Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers and also encountered Leo Amino. She is best known for her looped-wire sculptures—interwoven, organic, abstract forms suspended in space. In 2022, Asawa was posthumously awarded the National Medal of the Arts, affirming the enduring impact of her life’s work.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Cindy Kang is curator at the Barnes Foundation. Since joining the curatorial team in 2017, Kang has been essential to the Barnes’s efforts to highlight the underrecognized contributions of women and artists of color. Over the last nine years, she has served as organizer or co-curator of Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris (2023); Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community (2022);Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray (2020); and Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist (2018). She has published on the topics of japonismeand chinoiserie as a researcher specializing in the relationship between painting and decorative arts in late 19th- and early 20th-century France. Before joining the Barnes, Kang held curatorial and research positions at the Bard Graduate Center, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Getty Research Institute, the Frick Collection, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kang received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated catalogue distributed by Yale University Press and edited by Cindy Kang with contributions by Genji Amino, Anne Anlin Cheng, Aiko Cuneo, S. Neil Fujita, Linda Kim, Kolleen Ku, Marci Kwon, Addie Lanier, Kimi Maru, Mira Nakashima, Kay Sekimachi, and Brandon Shimoda. Scholarly essays connect the six artists’ work and careers to the broader histories of Asian labor in the United States and the racialization of Japanese Americans. Interviews with the artists’ children and grandchildren, an excerpt of Fujita’s unpublished memoir, and a conversation with the sole surviving artist, Sekimachi, offer intimate insights into their lives and practices. An original poem by Shimoda responds to Noguchi’s seminal essay “I Become a Nisei.” Collectively, the works, essays, and reflections address how the tumultuous history of Asian America helped form the foundation of modern design in the United States.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION
Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America is organized by the Barnes Foundation and curated by curator Cindy Kang.

Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America is on view at the Barnes from September 20, 2026, to January 10, 2027.

This exhibition is part of Philadelphia’s yearlong commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary in 2026. The celebration encompasses major sporting events, cultural exhibitions, and community programs that honor Philadelphia’s role as the birthplace of American democracy. For more information about this historic milestone year, visit philly2026.com.

EXHIBITION SPONSORS
Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

Major support is provided by Denise Littlefield Sobel and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. Generous support is provided by The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation and Lenore G. Tawney Foundation. Additional support is provided by Ilana Dean of the Beryl and Morris Dean Family Fund, Michael and Sandra Dean, Margaret C. Hallenbeck, and Barbara Podell and Mark Singer.

Ongoing funding for exhibitions comes from the Christine and Michael Angelakis Exhibition Fund, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund, Lois and Julian Brodsky Exhibition Fund, Elaine W. Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr. Exhibition Fund, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Christine and George Henisee Exhibition Fund, Aileen and Brian Roberts Exhibition Fund, and Tom and Margaret Lehr Whitford Exhibition Fund.

The exhibition publication is supported by the Lois and Julian Brodsky Publications Fund the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

In addition, we thank annual contributors to the Barnes Foundation Exhibition Fund for supporting all exhibitions:

Joan Carter and John Aglialoro, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, Julia and David Fleischner, Victoria McNeil Le Vine, Leigh and John Middleton, Jeanette and Joe Neubauer, and Aileen and Brian Roberts

John Alchin and Hal Marryatt, N. Judith Broudy, Julie Jensen Bryan, Emily and Michael Cavanagh, Marianne N. Dean, Eugene and Michelle Dubay, Penelope P. Harris, Jones & Wajahat Family, Lisa D. Kabnick and John H. McFadden, Victor F. Keen and Jeanne Ruddy, Marguerite Lenfest, Maribeth and Steven Lerner, Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation, Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan, Cathy and Henry Nassau, The Park Family, Wendy and Mark Rayfield, Anne and Bruce Robinson, Adele K. Schaeffer, Katie and Tony Schaeffer, Donna and Jerry Slipakoff, Dr. and Mrs. Eugene E. Stark, Joan F. Thalheimer, Bruce and Robbi Toll, van Beuren Charitable Foundation, and Randi Zemsky and Bob Lane.

ABOUT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
The Barnes is a nonprofit cultural and educational institution that shares its unparalleled art collection with the public, organizes special exhibitions, and presents programming that fosters new ways of thinking about human creativity. The Barnes collection is displayed in ensembles that integrate art and objects from across cultures and time periods, overturning traditional hierarchies and revealing universal elements of human expression. Home to one of the world’s finest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern paintings—including the largest groups of paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne in existence—the Barnes brings together renowned canvases by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Vincent van Gogh, alongside African, Asian, ancient, medieval, and Native American art as well as metalwork, furniture, and decorative art.

The Barnes was established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.” A visionary collector and pioneering educator, Dr. Barnes was also a fierce advocate for the civil rights of African Americans, women, and the economically marginalized. Committed to racial equality and social justice, he established a scholarship program to support young Black artists, writers, and musicians who wanted to further their education. Dr. Barnes became actively involved in the Harlem Renaissance, during which he collaborated with philosopher Alain Locke and Charles S. Johnson, the scholar and activist, to promote awareness of the artistic value of African art.

Since moving to Philadelphia in 2012, the Barnes has expanded its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social justice, teaching visual literacy in groundbreaking ways; investing in original scholarship relating to its collection; and enhancing accessibility throughout every facet of its programs.

The Barnes is situated in Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people. Read our Land Acknowledgment.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

Deirdre Maher, Lead Director of Communications / 215.278.7160, press@barnesfoundation.org
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