Where Else to See Kusama

Continuing through February 7, 2021, ICA Boston presents LOVE IS CALLING, an installation by Yayoi Kusama that debuted in Japan in 2013, and that was presented in a solo exhibition at David Zwirner that same year. This show features a presentation drawn from the ICA’s collection titled Beyond Infinity: Contemporary Art After Kusama, offering insight into the development of Kusama’s work and its influence on contemporary art.

Infinity Mirrored Room―My Heart is Dancing Into the Universe (2018) is on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

^{Exterior view of the Yayoi Kusama Museum. Photo by Masahiro Tsuchido ©YAYOI KUSAMA}

At the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, SPIRITS OF AGGREGATION features early works from the artist’s Accumulation series, begun in 1961, as well as photographs and documents related to these works. The Kusama Museum, inaugurated in 2014 and open year-round, "could only be hers," The New York Times remarks, "The unmistakable touches include large red polka dots and mirrors in the elevators and a bulbous mosaic pumpkin sculpture on the top floor."

Visitors to ICA Miami can walk through Yayoi Kusama’s 2016 Infinity Mirror Room, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins. “The first time I ever saw a pumpkin was when I was in elementary school and went with my grandfather to visit a big seed-harvesting ground,” the artist writes in her autobiography; “It seems that pumpkins do not inspire much respect. But I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form. What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness. That and its solid spiritual balance.”

This Thanksgiving, Kusama joins the legendary Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade^®  in New York. On Thursday, November 28, 2019, Kusama’s LOVE FLIES UP TO THE SKY balloon will debut in the annual holiday spectacle in front of more than 3.5 million spectators and more than 50 million viewers nationwide, as the latest entry in the Parade’s Blue Sky Gallery series, which invites celebrated contemporary artists to contribute artworks to the high flying lineup.

In spring 2020, the New York Botanical Garden will present a major exhibition of Kusama’s work. Titled KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE, this presentation will explore the artist’s lifelong engagement with nature, and will include multiple installations, from her signature mirrored environments and organic forms to polka-dotted sculptures of flowers and pumpkins, paintings, and a participatory greenhouse installation that will be transformed over the course of the exhibition. Also on display will be sketchbooks demonstrating the early fascination with the natural world that continues to inspire Kusama’s work.

^{Kusama with Pumpkin, 2010}

Directed by documentary filmmaker Heather Lenz and premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Kusama–Infinity is a feature-length documentary exploring the artist’s career, from her early life in Japan to the fifteen years she spent in New York, starting in 1958, to her return to her native country and the international recognition of her work.

Cover Image: Yayoi Kusama, LOVE IS CALLING, 2013 (detail)