The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive program and a publication. The entire project represents a journey into Kusama’s profound fascination with the natural world, its shapes, colors and extravagance, a distinctive feature of her career. A passion that is rooted in the summers spent among the greenhouses and fields of her family’s nursery in Matsumoto, Japan, during her childhood.
The works are exhibited in and around the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, and in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library building. On display at the Library is also a sketchbook by Kusama (1945) dedicated to the flowering cycle of peonies. New installations include “Flower Obsession” (2017/2021), which invites visitors to cover a room with flowers, “Dancing Pumpkin” (2020), a monumental sculpture installed on the Conservatory Lawn, “I Want to Fly to the Universe” ( 2020), an impressive 13-foot-high biomorphic form, and “Infinity Mirrored Room-Illusion Inside the Heart” (2020), which requires a separate ticket and advanced booking.
A 250-acre landscape animated by installations, floral displays and seasonal cultures brings to life an exhibition that will change over time. Inspired by Kusama’s painting “Alone, Buried in a Flower Garden” (2014), the botanical garden’s horticulturists have designed a living work of art with plants and flowers, a tribute to nature and its cyclical vitality: spring tulips and irises will give way to dahlias and sunflowers during the summer, until pumpkins ripen in autumn.
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