Takaezu became internationally known for radically reimagining the ceramic vessel form as an object for limitless experimentation. She saw her ceramic sculptures as three-dimensional abstract paintings. She was also an influential instructor of ceramics at Princeton University from 1967 to 1992.

Closed Form, 2004, private collection

Her signature “closed form” ceramic sculptures, ranging from palm-sized works to immersive environments, were completely sealed except for a tiny pinhole at the top and often included “rattles,” adding an element of sound. Videos by Native Hawaiian composer and co-curator Leilehua Lanzilotti demonstrate the important role sound played in Takaezu’s work.

The artist’s connection to nature greatly influenced her work. Among her later innovations were cylindrical vessels that she called “Trees,” inspired by a 1973 visit to Hawai‘i Island’s Devastation Trail, a stark landscape dotted with vestiges of trees that is a result of a 1959 volcanic eruption. Several “Trees” will be installed on the museum grounds, inviting audiences to experience her dialogue with nature firsthand.

“Takaezu’s story is deeply connected to the cultures of Hawaiʻi, to nature here, and to this museum,” says HoMA senior curator of modern and contemporary art Tyler Cann, who curated the exhibition at HoMA with associate curator of contemporary art Katherine Love. “This is where she first took art classes and showed her work, so it is amazing to bring her story full circle with this exhibition.”

Takaezu was ahead of her time and preferred to let her artwork speak for itself. When reflecting on her practice, she once said, “I realized that the beauty was coming from something outside of me; a power that was passing through me; an intangible source that I can’t pinpoint.”

In her 1975 essay “Thrown Form,” Takaezu wrote, “In my life I see no difference between making pots, cooking, and growing vegetables. They are all related. However, there is a need for me to work in clay. It is so gratifying, and I get so much joy from it, and it gives me many answers for my life.”

Toshiko Takaezu at the Honolulu Museum of Art (then Honolulu Academy of Arts) in 1958.

HoMA has a long history with Takaezu, which began in 1947 when she started to take drawing and painting classes at the Museum. She first showed work in the 1948 group exhibition “Hawaii Creates.” In 1993, the Honolulu Academy of Arts and The Contemporary Museum (now together forming the Honolulu Museum of Art) organized a retrospective of her work covering 1950 to 1992. HoMA holds 104 works by Takaezu in its collection. She visited the Museum throughout her life, the last time in 2010, just a year before her death.

EXHIBITION
Featuring approximately 125 objects from public and private collections across the country, including 27 works from HoMA’s collection, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within traces the development of Takaezu’s hybrid practice over seven decades. The exhibition documents her early student work in Hawai‘i and at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, her tenure at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and her years teaching at Princeton University and Skidmore College. To represent this evolution, installations range from a set table of functional wares from the early 1950s to an immersive constellation of monumental ceramic forms from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.

The exhibition features her signature ceramic forms including “closed forms,” Moons, Garden Seats, and Trees. The Trees will be on view outside the gallery entrance and in a nearby outdoor courtyard. Also included are rarely seen acrylic paintings, weavings, and a bronze bell. Sound will also play an important role in this exhibition as many of Takaezu’s closed ceramic forms contain unseen “rattles.”

The multisensory experience is amplified by videos and interactive installations developed by composer, sound artist, and exhibition co-curator Leilehua Lanzilotti, who was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in music. Lanzilotti’s work includes a concert program, a standalone video installation, and a series of demonstration videos centered on the hidden element of sound in Takaezu’s works. In 2024, Lanzilotti’s new concert and installation works were released as an album centered around Takaezu’s work on Innova Recordings, which are available in the HoMA Shop.

“It is a joy to illuminate the hidden sonic landscapes of Takaezu’s closed forms through my involvement both as an artist and a co-curator,” wrote Lanzilotti. “Having grown up around Takaezu’s work in Honolulu, I’m honored to respond to her closed forms with this series of multimedia and musical works. Bringing my own perspective as a Kanaka Maoli artist to the colors and textures that inspired Takaezu as a child, I hope these additions to the exhibition inspire audiences to meet her work with childlike wonder and curiosity.”

PROGRAMS
The exhibition will be accompanied by engaging public programs that illuminate the artist and her work. Guided viewings and talks by exhibition curators as well as artists who worked with Takaezu will be a core part of the program offerings.

MONOGRAPH
Accompanying the exhibition is a monograph of the same name, published by The Noguchi Museum in association with Yale University Press. This comprehensive exploration of Takaezu is the first to be developed with full access to the artist’s newly digitized papers in the Archives of American Art, and represents an extraordinary depth of research and range of perspectives. The book, edited by Glenn Adamson, Dakin Hart, and Kate Wiener, features nine essays on Takaezu’s life and work by leading scholars, curators, and artists, including art historian Margo Machida, who like Takaezu was born on Hawai‘i Island and has had a flourishing career on the East Coast. The monograph is the most ambitious study of an American ceramic artist to date. 368 pages, 294 color and black-and-white illustrations. Hardcover. $65. Available in the HoMA Shop.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION AND FUNDING
“Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” is organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family.

The exhibition and its national tour have been made possible through lead support from the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Major support for the HoMA presentation of the exhibition is provided by Sharon Twigg-Smith, in memory of Jay Jensen.

The exhibition is co-curated by Noguchi Museum curator Kate Wiener, independent curator Glenn Adamson, and sound artist and composer Leilehua Lanzilotti. The exhibition was conceived and developed with former Noguchi Museum senior curator Dakin Hart.

The curators for the Honolulu Museum of Art’s presentation are senior curator of modern and contemporary art Tyler Cann with associate curator of contemporary art Katherine Love. 

ABOUT GLENN ADAMSON Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer, and historian based in New York and London. He has previously been Director of the Museum of Arts and Design and Head of Research at the V&A. Dr. Adamson’s publications include Thinking Through Craft (2007); The Craft Reader (2010); Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (2011, with Jane Pavitt); The Invention of Craft (2013); Art in the Making (2016, with Julia Bryan-Wilson); Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects (2018); Objects: USA 2020; and Craft: An American History (2021). Dr. Adamson is editor of Material Intelligence, a quarterly online journal published by the Chipstone Foundation, and curator-at-large for LongHouse Reserve. His next book, A Century of Tomorrows, will be out with Bloomsbury in December 2024.

ABOUT LEILEHUA LANZILOTTI Leilehua Lanzilotti is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) composer and sound artist dedicated to the arts of our time. A “leading composer–performer” (The New York Times), Lanzilotti’s work is characterized by expansive explorations of timbre. Lanzilotti’s practice explores radical indigenous contemporaneity by integrating community engagement and ways of knowing into the heart of projects. Lanzilotti was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music for with eyes the color of time (string orchestra), which the Pulitzer committee called, “a vibrant composition … that distinctly combines experimental string textures and episodes of melting lyricism.” Additional honors include a 2023 MacGeorge Fellowship as University Guest Academic within Fine Arts and Music at University of Melbourne, and the 2021 McKnight Visiting Composer among other accolades. As a recording artist, Lanzilotti has played on albums from Björk’s Vulnicura Live and Joan Osborne’s Love and Hate, to Dai Fujikura’s Chance Monsoon and David Lang’s anatomy theater. Dr. Lanzilotti also served as the Curator of Music at The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center from 2019–21. leilehualanzilotti.com | @annezilotti

ABOUT KATE WIENER Kate Wiener is a Curator at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York, where she is involved with exhibitions, public programs, and publications. Recent curatorial projects at The Noguchi Museum include A Glorious Bewilderment: Marie Menken’s ‘Visual Variations on Noguchi’ (2023–24), and the co-organized exhibitions Noguchi Subscapes (2022–23), Noguchi: Useless Architecture (2021–22), and Noguchi’s Memorials to the Atomic Dead (2021). She has contributed to numerous publications, including Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within (Yale University Press, 2024), Looking Up: The Skyviewing Sculptures of Isamu Noguchi (Giles, 2022), Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon (New Museum, 2017), and Out of Bounds: The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker (Getty Research Institute/New Museum, 2019).

ABOUT THE NOGUCHI MUSEUM Founded in 1985 by category-defying Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now known as The Noguchi Museum) in Queens, New York, was the first museum in the United States to be established, designed, and installed by a living artist to show their own work. Itself widely viewed as among the artist’s greatest achievements and holding the world’s largest collection of his works, the Museum features open air and indoor galleries in a repurposed industrial building and a serene outdoor sculpture garden. Since its founding, it has served as an international hub for Noguchi research and appreciation. In addition to managing the artist’s archives and catalogue raisonné, the Museum exhibits a comprehensive selection of Noguchi’s material culture, from sculpture, models, and drawings, to his personal possessions. Provocative installations drawn from the permanent collection, together with diverse special exhibitions and collaborations with practitioners across disciplines, offer a multifaceted view of Noguchi’s art and illuminate his enduring influence. noguchi.org | @noguchimuseum

ABOUT THE TOSHIKO TAKAEZU FOUNDATION The Toshiko Takaezu Foundation was founded in 2015 to preserve and promote the legacy of renowned abstract sculptor Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) and to educate the public about her work and teachings. Her art was deeply influenced by nature, her experiences in Hawai‘i and New Jersey, as well as her travels around the world, particularly in Japan and Okinawa. The Foundation facilitates exhibitions, supports research projects, provides access to archives, and ensures public awareness of Takaezu’s artistic contributions. Toshikotakaezufoundation.org

​​The Honolulu Museum of Art is Hawai‘i’s premier art institution, inspiring and uplifting the community through transformative art experiences. Founded in 1927 to reflect Hawai‘i’s multicultural makeup, today HoMA’s extraordinary collection of more than 55,000 works of art from across the globe spans 5,000 years.