Detail of Leo Amino's sculpture In Between

Barnes FoundationBenjamin Franklin Parkway / Museum District

Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America

Now showing20 September 2026 – 10 January 2027$30

Sculpture and design by six Japanese American artists (Isamu Noguchi, George Nakashima, Leo Amino, S. Neil Fujita, Kay Sekimachi and Ruth Asawa) whose work reshaped modern American design after WWII incarceration.

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On now All of November 2026

The first rooms are papered in black, roofing nails left showing, to recall the tarpaper barracks of the camps where five of these six artists were held during World War II. Among the camp objects is a branch of dried bitterbrush from Minidoka, one of the small branches Nakashima, Noguchi and Amino kept for decades.

The galleries then turn bright and midcentury-coloured, and the objects get familiar: Noguchi's Akari lamps and IN-50 coffee table, Nakashima's chairs, Ruth Asawa's hanging wire forms, S. Neil Fujita's cover for Dave Brubeck's Time Out, even his Bugles snack bag. You finish in a living room furnished with their work. "You may not have a Noguchi Akari lamp, but you may have the knockoffs from Target and Ikea," curator Cindy Kang told the Inquirer.

Exhibition designer Stephanie Goto calls that prelude "heavy". It's in the Roberts Gallery, included with general admission ($30, students $5, valid two consecutive days). A one-hour tour runs Thursday to Monday at 1pm, and First Fridays stay open until 9pm.

Editor's pick

The first rooms are papered in black, roofing nails showing, to recall the camp barracks where five of these six artists were held. Then come Noguchi's Akari lamps, Ruth Asawa's wire forms and S. Neil Fujita's Bugles snack bag.

Look for

Nakashima's Milk House Table
A 1944 teak coffee table made after he left Minidoka, its knots and cracks left in plain view rather than sanded away.
Noguchi's My Arizona
A white relief full of hollows and bumps, with a sheet of magenta plexiglass hung above it casting warm light onto the surface.
Sekimachi's Kunoyuki
A human-sized hanging woven from undyed clear monofilament, so transparent it reads almost like a ghost.
Fujita's Time Out cover
The 1959 Dave Brubeck sleeve, with its blue colour fields and round shapes, beside the Godfather book jacket he also designed.
Asawa's seven-lobed wire form
A hanging looped-wire sculpture of seven interlocking lobes, with spheres caught inside the first and sixth.