The Noguchi Museum in Queens keeps widening the scope of its eponymous star—the designer and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Its latest exhibition also introduces the work of Isamu Kenmochi, an industrial designer revered in Japan, where his firm has continued to thrive despite his 1971 suicide. Kicking off this month, Design: Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi traces a collaboration that used traditional workmanship and natural materials in the service of inventive design, beginning when Noguchi made a visit to Japan in 1950. He found Kenmochi in the midst of a quest to forge a distinctly Japanese version of modernism, despite an earlier government mandate for a kitschy, nationalistic "Imperial Crown style." It's no wonder that the chair became Kenmochi's primary laboratory, since it was relatively new to an island nation of cushions and tatami mats. In this spirit, the museum is reproducing one-offs of two long–lost prototypes—Kenmochi's Bamboo Chair and the duo's masterpiece, the Basket Chair—as well as offering a reissue of Kenmochi's classic Round Chair ($2,200) for purchase.—OWEN PHILLIPS

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