Yayoi Kusama to get major European retrospective in 2025–26.
Portrait of Yayoi Kusama with Yellow Tree / Living Room at the Aichi Triennale, 2010. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, David Zwirner.
Yayoi Kusama will be the subject of a major retrospective at several European museums beginning in 2025. The exhibition “Yayoi Kusama” will first open at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel on October 12, 2025, before moving to Cologne’s Museum Ludwig on March 14th, 2026, and finally to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum on September 11, 2026.
Visitors can expect to see works from across the full span of Kusama’s nearly eight-decade career—from the artist’s polka-dot paintings and giant pumpkin sculptures to her immersive “infinity mirror room” installations. The show will feature several iconic pieces known globally alongside historic works that have never been seen before in Europe.
The traveling exhibition will also include new pieces created specifically for this show, but the specific media and titles of these have yet to be announced.
“Yayoi Kusama is an artist who compels us to see the world through a different lens,” said Rein Wolfs, director of the Stedelijk Museum. “Even at her advanced age, she continues to captivate audiences, drawing in visitors of all generations with her mesmerizing creations. This exhibition promises to be a feast for the eyes where one can truly lose themselves in her extraordinary art.”
Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama started her career in the 1950s before moving to New York in 1958. There, she became a central figure in the city’s avant-garde movements of the 1960s, most notably the Pop Art movement. By 1968, she gained widespread notoriety for organizing a series of performances with naked people painted with polka dots—titled the “Anatomic Explosion” series. In 1993, Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, and she has gone on to become one of the most recognizable and popular artists working today. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide. In October, Kusama was the subject of a solo presentation at her representing gallery Victoria Miro in London, its 14th show of the artist. Kusama is also represented by David Zwirner.
Meanwhile, a new “infinity mirror room” installation is debuting at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Infinity Mirrored Room – My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light (2024) is part of the artist’s Australian retrospective, which opens on December 15th and runs until April 21st, 2025. The exhibition will include approximately 200 works spanning eight decades of Kusama’s career, including 10 immersive installation rooms.
Correction: a previous version of this article stated that Kusama was born in 1926. She was born in 1929.
