Back in 2019, the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) announced an upcoming Yayoi Kusama show titled Kusama: Cosmic Nature, featuring her first ever participatory installation, intended to change with the seasons. Unfortunately, the show’s 2020 run was subsequently cancelled, as we watched spring, summer, and autumn pass by outside our windows during quarantine.
Now, in good news for art and selfie fans alike, the postponed show has a new opening date. The Bronx-based NYBG has announced that Kusama: Cosmic Nature will open on April 10, 2021, with new considerations for coronavirus guidelines. Tickets, for example, will be limited, and staggered to prevent crowding in certain areas.
“Managing density within the garden has been a major consideration,” an NYBG spokesman tells The Art Newspaper. “Tickets will be limited to no more than 33% capacity for outdoor venues and no more than 25% capacity for indoor venues.”
The show is also set to include a new iteration of Kusama’s famed Infinity Rooms (which have long featured restrictions to deal with massive crowds of attendees on the hunt for a good Insta pic). The newly-commissioned artwork, Infinity Mirrored Room – Illusion Inside the Heart (2020), takes the form of a glass cube with mirrored sides, reflecting the gardens around it.
The Botanical Garden may have to wait until summer, however, to determine whether visitors are allowed inside the installation, in accordance with New York State and City coronavirus regulations. Meanwhile, you’ll still be able to view it from the outside, alongside previously-unseen archival materials, floral installations, and polka dot fabric-wrapped trees spread across the 250-acre grounds.
Back in April 2020, Kusama shared a defiant poem in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, urging us to: “overcome our unhappiness” and “fight this terrible monster.” In August, meanwhile, the iconic artist became the subject of a new graphic biography.
Kusama: Cosmic Nature is set to run at the New York Botanical Garden from April 10 to October 31, 2021.