Yayoi Kusama Exhibition Coming to American Art Museums

Contemporary art enthusiasts will be excited to hear that a career-spanning exhibit of Japanese artist (and one of Time’s Most Influential People of 2016) Yayoi Kusama is coming to American art museums this year and next. Kusama, an 87-year-old Tokyo-based artist currently residing primarily in a psychiatric facility, has drawn overwhelming praise for channeling her mental health issues into immersive landscapes.

The exhibition will include some highlights from her career. Featured will be her “Works on Paper,” which use the surrealist technique of decalcomania to depict microbiological landscapes. Nearby will be her “Infinity Nets,” which elegantly challenge traditional artistic notions of linearity and narrative in art. Also present will be selections from her “My Eternal Soul” collection, which expands and adds color and energy to the biomorphic reality of her “Works on Paper.” The highlight, however, for viewers of the exhibition will be her “Infinity Room” project, in which Kusama, using mirror-generated infinity rooms as her canvas, has brought intergalactic and deeply Freudian landscapes to life—pictured above is one such installation.

Find the exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden from Feb. 23 through May 17, the Seattle Art Museum from June 30 through Sept. 10, the Broad in Los Angeles from October 2017 through January 2018, the Art Gallery of Ontario from March through May, 2018, and the Cleveland Museum of Art from July through October, 2018.