Isamu Noguchi's Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, 1930-1950

Exploring the complex interweaving of race, national identity, and the practice of sculpture, Amy Lyford takes us through a close examination of the early US career of the Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904—1988). The years between 1930 and 1950 were perhaps some of the most fertile of Noguchi’s career. Yet the work that he produced during this time has received little sustained attention.

Weaving together new archival material, little—known or unrealized works, and those that a...