Yayoi Kusama with recent works in Tokyo, 2016. Photo: Tomoaki Makino, Courtesy of the artist © Yayoi Kusama
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC announced Tuesday, 16 August, that it will send its bonanza exhibition of work by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama—including six of her Infinity Rooms—on a major tour to four other stops in North America.
Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, which opens at the Hirshhorn on 23 February 2017, will travel to the Seattle Art Museum (30 June 2017-20 September 2017), the Broad in Los Angeles (October 2017- January 2018), the Art Gallery of Ontario (March 2018-May 2018) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (July 2018-October 2018).
The show includes six of Kusama’s popular room-sized installations, which have attracted round-the-block queues in Los Angeles and New York, as well as more than 60 paintings and sculptures and archival materials that have never been seen before. “The real value… is connecting the work she did in the 1960s to her work today through the Infinity Rooms,” says the Hirshhorn’s director, Melissa Chiu.
The show will include a re-installation of Love Forever (1966/1995), in which Kusama transformed her studio into a performance chamber covered in mirrors. The 87-year-old artist still creates new works in her studio in Japan as a form of art therapy.
Meanwhile, a similar touring show of Kusama’s work is underway in Scandinavia. Yayoi Kusama: Towards Infinity opened at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, last year and travelled to the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, Norway, before its current display at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden (until 11 Septmeber), and a final stop at the Helsinki Art Museum, Finland (7 October-22 January 2017).