Susumu Shingu: Elated!
Susumu Shingu: Elated!
June 20—August 10, 2025
Japan Society Gallery relaunches its summer exhibition season with Susumu Shingu: Elated!
The artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City, Susumu Shingu: Elated!, presents the dynamic sculptures of acclaimed artist Susumu Shingu. The joyful exhibition features mesmerizing sculptures that make visible the invisible forces of wind, heat, and gravity, while encouraging a heightened awareness of the natural environment. Shingu’s application of biomimicry—drawing inspiration from natural elements and processes—appears in both the forms and the dynamic movement of his sculptures, evoking insects, birds, sea creatures, flowers, plants, clouds, stars, and moons.
Since the 1960s, Susumu Shingu (b. 1937) has designed and engineered kinetic artworks that enliven parks, plazas, and public spaces around the globe. His traveling outdoor exhibition Windcircus completed a U.S. tour in 1988, visiting sites in New York; Fall River, Massachusetts; Chicago; Boston; and Los Angeles. Since 1989, his collaborations with Italian architect Renzo Piano (b. 1937), including Boundless Sky (1994) suspended in Kansai International Airport terminal building, have become world renowned. Shingu has also created several site-specific, monumental sculptures permanently installed in New York City: Dialog with the Sun (1995), Distant Sky (2012), and Rainbow Leaves (2021).
Celebrating Shingu’s long and impactful career, this exhibition encourages us to contemplate our changing climate while appreciating summer breezes, inside and beyond the gallery walls.
About Susumu Shingu:
Susumu Shingu (b. 1937) is an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist known for his kinetic sculptures powered by wind and other natural forces. Originally trained in oil painting, Shingu later studied shipbuilding technology and aerodynamics to help engineer the complex movements of his three-dimensional artworks. He has collaborated closely with architects, including the Italian architect Renzo Piano (b. 1937), to realize site-specific moving sculptures. He has participated in exhibitions worldwide and organized global tours of his artworks. In addition to his sculpture practice, since 1975, Shingu has written and illustrated children’s books that examine snapshots of our natural environment. In 2014, Shingu opened an open-air sculpture garden (Susumu Shingu Wind Museum) for the local community in Sanda, Hyogo prefecture, where he lives and works.
Admission Information
Thursdays & Fridays: 11 am–7 pm
Saturdays & Sundays: noon-7 pm
Closed on major holidays
Tickets
$15 nonmembers
$10 students and seniors
Admission is always free for members, patrons with disabilities and an accompanying Personal Care Assistant.
Exhibition-Related Events
Banner Image: Blue Sky Traveling Butterfly © Susumu Shingu
Additional Image Credit: Susumu Shingu, Little Cosmos, 2014. Stainless steel, carbon fiber, polyester cloth. Photo © Studio Pack Co., Ltd.
Champion Sponsor, MUFG Bank, Ltd.; Advocate Sponsor, Mizuho Americas; and Friend Sponsor, Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas).
Japan Society programs are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Exhibitions and Arts & Culture Lecture Programs are made possible, in part, by Sompo Holdings, Inc.; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund; the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; The Masako Mera and Koichi Mera, PhD Fund for Education and the Arts; Yasko Tashiro and Thierry Porté; Peggy and Dick Danziger; The Globus Family; Jun Makihara and Megumi Oka; Barbara Bertozzi Castelli; Members, Japan Society Gallery Council; and other Gallery supporters. Support for Arts & Culture Lecture Programs is provided, in part, by the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund.
Transportation assistance is provided by Japan Airlines, the official Japanese airline sponsor for Japan Society Gallery exhibitions.
