Join Doryun Chong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator at M+, Hong Kong, for a special talk on Isamu Noguchi’s transdisciplinary work in sculpture, design, and landscape architecture. M+ holds over 36 works and a permanent ‘Playscape’ garden by the Japanese American artist.

Isamu Noguchi famously referred to his larger spatial works comprising multiple objects as gardens–suggesting that plants were optional in a garden, but what mattered was the ability to contemplate “the relative in space, time and life.” Noguchi’s work in landscape architecture was in a continuum with other mediums, genres, and disciplines he worked in, such as modernist sculpture and industrial design. Ultimately, his vision was a transdisciplinary one, perhaps in reflection of his transcultural background. In that sense, Noguchi remains, like Geoffrey Bawa, a lodestar for navigating contemporary discourse on creative practice.

Doryun Chong was appointed as the inaugural Chief Curator in 2013, he oversees all curatorial activities and programmes at the museum. He has curated or co-curated critically acclaimed exhibitions for M+, including Noguchi for Danh Vo: Counterpoint (2018), Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now (2022), and Picasso for Asia—A Conversation (2025). Prior to joining M+, Chong worked at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

This event is supported by the Graham Foundation and is part of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust’s On Gardens series. It follows a talk by Isabela Ono on the work of Roberto Burle Marx.

Image: Isamu Noguchi, ‘M+ Playscape’, West Kowloon, Hong Kong © The Noguchi Museum / ARS. Photo © Lok Cheng.