Editing Isamu Noguchi (section)

==Further career in the United States (1937–1948)==
Noguchi returned to New York in 1937. He designed the [[Zenith Radio Nurse]], the iconic original [[baby monitor]] now held in many museum collections. The Radio Nurse was Noguchi's first major design commission and he called it "my only strictly industrial design".<ref name=EID>{{cite book |last = Banham |first = Joanna |title = Encyclopedia of Interior Design |publisher = [[Routledge]] |date = 1997 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=DVKhCAAAQBAJ&q=zenith+&pg=PT3089 |isbn = 978-1-136-78757-7 }}</ref>

He again began to turn out portrait busts, and after various proposals was selected for two sculptures. The first of these, a fountain built of automobile parts for the [[Ford Motor Company]]'s exhibit at the [[1939 New York World's Fair]], was thought of poorly by critics and Noguchi alike<ref>Duus, 2004. p. 159</ref><ref>Noguchi, 1968. p. 24</ref> but nevertheless introduced him to fountain-construction and [[magnesite]]. Conversely, his second sculpture, a nine-ton [[stainless steel]] [[bas-relief]] entitled ''News'', was unveiled over the entrance to the [[Associated Press]] building at the [[Rockefeller Center]] in April 1940 to much praise.<ref>"Stainless Sculpture", (May 5, 1940). ''The New York Times''. p. 2.</ref> Following further rejections of his playground designs, Noguchi left on a cross-country road trip with [[Arshile Gorky]] and Gorky's fiancée in July 1941, eventually separating from them to go to Hollywood.

Following the [[attack on Pearl Harbor]], anti-Japanese sentiment was energized in the United States, and in response Noguchi formed "[[Nisei]] Writers and Artists for Democracy". Noguchi and other group leaders wrote to influential officials, including the congressional committee headed by Representative [[John H. Tolan]], hoping to halt the [[internment of Japanese Americans]]; Noguchi later attended the hearings but had little effect on their outcome. He later helped organize a documentary of the internment, but left California before its release; as a legal resident of New York, he was allowed to return home. He hoped to prove Japanese-American loyalty by somehow contributing to the war effort, but when other governmental departments turned him down, Noguchi met with [[John Collier (sociologist)|John Collier]], head of the [[Office of Indian Affairs]], who persuaded him to travel to the internment camp located on an [[Indian reservation]] in [[Poston, Arizona]], to promote [[handicraft|arts and crafts]] and community.<ref name="Duus, 2004. p. 169">Duus, 2004. p. 169</ref>

Noguchi arrived at the [[Poston War Relocation Center|Poston camp]] in May 1942, becoming its only voluntary internee.<ref name="Duus, 2004. p. 169"/> Noguchi first worked in a carpentry shop, but his hope was to design parks and recreational areas within the camp. Although he created several plans at Poston, among them designs for baseball fields, swimming pools, and a cemetery,<ref>Duus, 2004. p. 170</ref> he found that the [[War Relocation Authority]] had no intention of implementing them. To the WRA camp administrators he was a troublesome interloper from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and to the internees he was an agent of the camp administration.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Duus|first1=Masayo|title=The Life of Isamu Noguchi|url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofisamunoguc00duus|url-access=registration|date=2004|publisher=Princeton University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/lifeofisamunoguc00duus/page/171 171–172]}}</ref> Many did not trust him and saw him as a spy. He had found nothing in common with the [[Nisei]], who regarded him as a strange outsider.

In June, Noguchi applied for release, but intelligence officers labeled him as a "suspicious person" due to his involvement in "Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy". He was finally granted a month-long furlough on November 12, but never returned; though he was granted a permanent leave afterward, he soon afterward received a deportation order. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, accusing him of espionage, launched into a full investigation of Noguchi which ended only through the [[American Civil Liberties Union]]'s intervention.<ref>Duus, 2004. pp. 184–185</ref> Noguchi would later retell his wartime experiences in the British World War II television documentary series ''[[The World at War]]''.

Upon his return to New York, Noguchi took a new studio in Greenwich Village. Throughout the 1940s, Noguchi's sculpture drew from the ongoing [[surrealist]] movement; these works include not only various [[mixed-media]] constructions and landscape reliefs, but ''lunars'' – self-illuminating reliefs – and a series of [[biomorphism|biomorphic]] sculptures made of interlocking slabs. The most famous of these assembled-slab works, ''Kouros'', was first shown in a September 1946 exhibition, helping to cement his place in the New York art scene.<ref>Duus, 2004. p. 191</ref>

In 1947 he began a working relationship with [[Herman Miller (manufacturer)|Herman Miller]] of Zeeland, Michigan. This relationship was to prove very fruitful, resulting in several designs that have become symbols of the [[modernist]] style, including the iconic [[Noguchi table]], which remains in production today. Noguchi also developed a relationship with [[Knoll (company)|Knoll]], designing furniture and lamps. During this period he continued his involvement with theater, designing sets for Martha Graham's ''[[Appalachian Spring]]'' and [[John Cage]] and [[Merce Cunningham]]'s production of ''The Seasons''. Near the end of his time in New York, he also found more work designing public spaces, including a commission for the ceilings of the [[Time-Life]] headquarters.

In March 1949, Noguchi had his first one-person show in New York since 1935 at the [[Charles Egan Gallery]].<ref name="timeline">[http://www.noguchi.org/noguchi/timeline Noguchi Museum: Timeline] (Drag to year, then month)</ref> In September 2003, The [[Pace Gallery]] held an exhibition of Noguchi's work at their 57th Street gallery. The exhibition, entitled ''33 MacDougal Alley: The Interlocking Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi'', featured eleven of the artist’s interlocking sculptures. This was the first exhibition to illustrate the historical significance of the relationship between MacDougal Alley and Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural work.<ref>[http://thepacegallery.com/repository/envs/live/resources/10795/Noguchi_33%20McDougal%20Alley.pdf 33 MacDougal Alley: The Interlocking Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi] Official media release by PaceWildenstein, New York, c. September 2003 (undated) {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717021338/http://thepacegallery.com/repository/envs/live/resources/10795/Noguchi_33%20McDougal%20Alley.pdf |date=July 17, 2011 }}</ref>
[[File:Isamu Noguchi at the Noguchi Garden Museum by David Finn.jpg|thumb|upright|Isamu Noguchi at the Noguchi Garden Museum, c.1985, [[David_Finn | ©David Finn Archive]], Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC]]