Seventy years of art in one museum. That's the extent of what the Municipal Museum down from Sept. 11, 2026. Yayoi Kusama, born in 1929 in Matsumoto and now 97 years old, will have a retrospective exhibition covering her entire career. From her very first paintings in Japan to the most recent sculptures from Tokyo. Curator Leontine Coelewij put the exhibition together, and the scale is impressive.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a brand new infinity mirror room, created especially for this occasion. Kusama's mirror rooms are her best-known work, and so she created this version specifically for this touring exhibition. Infinity is a central theme in her practice, as are self-denial and repetition. Those dots, those mirrors, those repeating patterns: it is not a gimmick but a philosophy of life that she has continued in her work for decades. The exhibition demonstrates this very concretely by showing the breadth of her oeuvre: paintings, sculptures, installations, fashion, collages as well as performances and literature.
The early works are perhaps the most interesting section for those who know Kusama primarily from her recent mirror installations. Paintings from Matsumoto from the 1950s are on display, as well as material from her time in New York in the 1960s, when she was part of the avant-garde movements there. Happenings, performances, radical art in a city bustling with new ideas at the time. Kusama was right in the middle of it. You can see that context in how the exhibition is structured, like a journey through her career and through the decades.
The exhibition runs through Jan. 17, 2027, so there is over four months. That's necessary, too, because this is not something you can get through in an hour. Schedule time, and go on a weekday morning if you can. The infinity mirror room alone will draw queues. Seventy years of work by one of the most talked about artists of the past century, close to home. You won't pass that up.