Event · Long Island City
Ikenobo Ikebana Marks 40 Years in New York at the Noguchi Museum, Long Island City
The Ikenobo Ikebana Society's New York City chapter marked its 40th anniversary with a two-day show, October 17–18, in the Noguchi Museum's Education Studio in Long Island City. About 45 arrangements by masters and members were on view, included with museum admission.
By NBT Editors · 2026-10-16
The Ikenobo Ikebana Society's New York City chapter celebrated its 40th anniversary with a two-day exhibition at The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, held October 17 and 18. The show filled the Education Studio on Level C with roughly 45 arrangements by the chapter's masters and members. It has now ended.
Ikenobo was founded more than 550 years ago in Kyoto and is described by the museum as the oldest and most enduring school of ikebana. The museum framed the show as a conversation between living flowers and Isamu Noguchi's sculpture, asking how nature, form and emptiness give meaning to one another. Like Noguchi's work, it said, ikebana treats balance and tension, movement and stillness as essential parts of composition.
Featured makers were Headmaster Designate Senko Ikenobo and Professor Kobayashi, both from Japan; Specially Entrusted Overseas Professor Noritaka Noda of New York; and members of the New York chapter. The museum's announcement said Senko Ikenobo would travel to New York for the anniversary and present a special arrangement.
Press coverage from Urgent Matter reported that she gave a demonstration at the Asia Society on Saturday, arranging three pieces: a tatehana, a Buddhist temple offering; a freestyle arrangement she tied to Halloween; and a shoka, a simpler style that follows a plant's life cycle. The same report said that days earlier a council of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs recommended designating rikka, the school's classical style, an Important Intangible Cultural Property and certifying her father, Sen'ei Ikenobo, as its holder. It also said the chapter was founded in August 1986.
The exhibition ran October 17 from 11am to 6pm and October 18 from 11am to 5pm, free with museum admission. The museum is at 9-01 33rd Road, at Vernon Boulevard. For Japanese readers in New York, it set one of the oldest traditions in Japanese flower arranging inside a museum shaped by an artist with strong ties to Japan.
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