Amy Hau to Lead Noguchi Museum

The Noguchi Museum in New York has named Amy Hau as its next director, theNew York Timesreports. She will begin her tenure at the institution on January 8, 2024. Currently the managing partner of WXY, an architecture and urban design firm, she fills the role left vacant by Brett Littman, whostepped downwithout explanation this past June after five years as director. In accepting the post, Hau returns to the institution where she launched her career, in 1986, as an assistant to renowned Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, the museum’s founder. The Noguchi Museum, which sits a block from the East River in Long Island City, Queens, is the first US institution that was established, designed, and installed by a living artist to showcase their own body of work. Arriving the year after it opened, Hau would remain with the institution for thirty years following the sculptor’s death, in 1988.RelatedVIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS RETURNS 44 ARTIFACTS TO EGYPT, ITALY, AND TURKEYTHE WHITNEY’S JANE PANETTA DECAMPS FOR THE MET Hau emigrated with her family from Hong Kong to Queens when she was just nine.

To the dismay of her parents, she studied painting and printmaking at Hunter College, minoring in art history. She went on to earn her MBA from Baruch College. At the Noguchi Museum, Hau established the artist’s inaugural archive and created collection records for some 3,500 works, rising to become director of administration and external affairs. Chief among the concerns that will receive her attention upon her return to the museum are a $19 million capital project,first announced in 2019, that involves restoring the sculptor’s studio and creating a new building to house the majority of his works. As well, she will focus on improving working conditions at the museum in regard to inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and sustainability. Hau, who found Noguchi to be “quite grandfatherly and a bit of a mentor,” told theTimesthat she hoped to draw inspiration from the sculptor’s concerns with resilience and sustainability, noting, “There’s just so much in his life’s work that really feeds into a lot of our struggles today culturally and socially.”.