Thirteen-hundred glimmering spheres float on the pond below Philip Johnson's Glass House, in the Lower Meadow on the renowned architect's 49-acre estate.
Just under a foot in diameter, the stainless steel orbs reflect the environment, creating seemingly endless echoes of the towering trees, the changing skies and the multiple arches of the pavilion Johnson designed at the pond's edge. Hollow, the spheres weigh less than a pound each, so when the wind blows, they drift, sometimes in groups, sometimes one by one. When they touch, they clatter gently, like a chorus of muffled typewriters.
This is the newest iteration of "Narcissus Garden," by Yayoi Kusama, an 87-year-old Japanese artist whose lifetime of works–paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, installations, performance "happenings"–have been defined by compulsively repetitive patterns, most famously polka dots. On the Glass House website, Ms. Kusama is quoted as saying: "The single dot is my own life, and I am a single particle amongst billions."
"Narcissus Garden" was first realized 50 years ago as a land installation at the 33rd Venice Biennale and has since been reinstalled internationally in numerous configurations; its last appearance on water in the United States was in Central Park as part of the 2004 Whitney Biennial. At the Glass House, it is one of three pieces that make up "Yayoi Kusama: Narcissus Garden," organized to commemorate the 110th anniversary of Johnson's birth and the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Glass House to the public.