In "Noa," a modern-day female Noah must face creating a new world in a time when the old myths that have informed our culture are in uneasy balance with new gene technology.
The sculpture is particularly valuable because it was thought to be lost and was known to scholars only from two photographs that Gauguin pasted in his own copy of "Noa Noa," a manuscript he wrote with Morice.
On our second visit, our school group overflowed Hakkakuso and we ended up staying down a lane and across a brook at Noa Noa, a whitewashed bed-and-breakfast surrounded by flower fields.
Mr. Aiello's son Travis, a senior in the R.O.T.C. program at Pennsylvania State University, modeled for the statue wearing a Vietnam-era military uniform, with Noa, a German shepherd who is not a military dog, beside him.
The flutist Camilla Hoitenga opened with two works by Ms. Saariaho Dolce Tormentoto," a breathy piccolo soliloquy, and "Noa Noa," a lavish work for flute and electronics, with video designed and overseen here by Jean-Baptiste Barrière, a composer and Ms. Saariaho's husband.
