Tokyo, Japan
2017
October 1, 2017–February 25, 2018
The Yayoi Kusama Museum has opened in Tokyo with the inaugural exhibition Creation Is a Solitary Pursuit, Love Is What Brings You Closer to Art. The exhibition presents 45 works including 16 paintings from the artist's recent series My Eternal Soul.
The museum dedicated to Kusama’s work is being directed by Tensei Tatebata, president of Tama Art University in Tokyo and director of the Saitama Museum of Modern Art in Tokiwa. There will be two exhibitions each year and one floor devoted to installations of the artist's mirrored "infinity rooms;" the top floor houses a reading room and an archive.
The New York Timesreports, "the museum, a five-story building designed by Kume Sekkei, was completed in 2014, but Ms. Kusama, 87, remained quiet about its purpose. (She perhaps alluded to the project in an interview in February with The Washington Post when she was asked what had been the highlight of her career. 'It's still coming,' Ms. Kusama said. 'I'm going to create it in the future.')" A further article in The New York Times describes "large red polka dots and mirrors in the elevators and a bulbous mosaic pumpkin sculpture on the top floor."
Critically acclaimed exhibitions of Kusama’s work are currently traveling through Asia and America. Life is the Heart of a Rainbow travels to Queensland Art Gallery at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane on November 4 following its presentation at the National Gallery Singapore, where it was the first major museum presentation of the artist's work in Southeast Asia (June 9 - September 3, 2017).
Infinity Mirrors, the major museum survey which includes an unprecedented six infinity rooms as well as installations, sculpture, and large scale paintings, travels throughout the United States and Canada through February 2019.