The High Museum of Art just opened the first major Isamu Noguchi design retrospective in nearly 25 years, and Atlanta gets it first for a reason. A 10-minute walk from the museum, tucked inside Piedmont Park, sits Playscapes, the only playground Noguchi ever built in the United States during his lifetime. It opened in May 1976.
"It is really because of Playscapes that I wanted to do this exhibition," said Monica Obniski, the High's curator of decorative arts and design.
The show, running through August 2, features nearly 200 objects spanning every decade of Noguchi's career. From clock timers and fashion illustrations for Harper's Bazaar in the 1920s and 1930s to the monumental civic plazas and artist-designed playgrounds that defined his later work, the exhibition makes the case that Noguchi was thinking about design as a democratic, public enterprise long before that idea became fashionable.
For Atlantans who have walked past Playscapes hundreds of times without knowing its history, the exhibition puts that familiar playground in a completely new context.
