The date for the opening of Yayoi Kusama’s first-of-its-kind New York Botanical Garden show, announced last year, draws ever closer. And, as the months tick down to the May opening, we’ve been offered some more insight into what visitors will get to experience.
Kusama’s works from past and present will be distributed through the 250-acre grounds, meaning it might be quite a stretch to take them all in, if you don’t have all day (though polka dot fabric-wrapped trees will help direct visitors).
This also means that there are some highlights to make sure you don’t miss, including a mysteriously-titled “obliteration greenhouse” and, yes, another new Infinity Room. More specifically, one adapted for the outdoors, which will change according to the lighting conditions (which, frankly, sounds amazing and as instagrammable as ever).
Of course, there will also be floral installations – this is the Botanical Garden, after all – in-keeping with Kusama’s continued interest in nature throughout her career as an artist. These will serve as a backdrop for her art – a new, huge pumpkin sculpture, for example – but will also try to recreate past artworks, such as Alone, Buried In A Flower Garden (2014), in flowers.
Work Kusama created as a teenager in Japan will also be on display for the first time. This will include the sketchbooks she filled with drawings of peonies (a careful, repetitive practice that partly stems from national and personal trauma, according to 2018’s documentary on her life, and has definitely informed her later creations).
The New York Botanical Garden Yayoi Kusama exhibition will be open May 9 – November 1, 2020.