Looking Up: The Skyviewing Sculptures of Isamu Noguchi

Accompanying the exhibition Looking Up (Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA July 26, 2022 – November 26, 2022), this catalogue explores the various forms that the skyviewing theme takes in the context of works comprising sixty years of Noguchi’s long career, 1928 to 1988.

Noguchi made two major skyviewing sculptures, one at Western Gallery, and the other in Honolulu, but the theme of space and charting our place in the universe is also present in many of his other works. Looking Up explores the changing artistic climate during Noguchi’s career, and places him in context with a younger generation of artists, including Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, James Turrell, and Charles Ross. Extensive commentaries on individual works—including many of his best-known sculptures—offer a fuller understanding of Noguchi’s complete body of work.

In addition, in his detailed study of Noguchi’s encounter with the Jantar Mantars, Matthew Kirsch explores an important source for the artist’s approaches to skyviewing. The volume also features photographs of the fabrication, transportation, and installation of the Skyviewing Sculpture in 1969, documented by photographer Mary Randlett.