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Member exclusive: Kusama x Champagne
July 13, 2023 | 5:30 pm–7:30 pm
Current, new, and renewing Hirshhorn Insider members are invited to say farewell to One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection with an exclusive final viewing and a Veuve Clicquot Champagne La Grande Dame 2012 toast on Wednesday, July 12, 5:30–7:30 PM or Thursday, July 13, 5:30–7:30 PM before the exhibition closes Sunday, July 16.
Members are invited to book their spots now. Please note: space is limited.
Questions? Email hmsgdevelopment@si.edu.
ABOUT ONE WITH ETERNITY
The Hirshhorn has been collecting the prolific work of Yayoi Kusama since 1996. Our 2017 survey of her work traveled to five North American art museums, introducing Kusama’s spellbinding visions to record audiences. Next up: an exhibition of her five works in our permanent collection, including two of the artist’s transcendent Infinity Mirror Rooms, sculptures, an early painting, and photographs of the artist. One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection is a tribute to the life and practice of this visionary artist.
One with Eternity showcases the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection of works by Kusama, including two of her Infinity Mirror Rooms—her first and one of her most recent—that create a dazzling sensation of never-ending space. These transcendent rooms are exhibited alongside an early painting; sculptures, including Pumpkin (2016) and Flowers—Overcoat (1964); and photographs of the artist. This exhibition honors Kusama’s distinctive vision of self-obliteration by exploring its development across media while also underscoring the Museum’s mission: to present the most exciting art and ideas of our time.
Among the additions to the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection is Kusama’s milestone, Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (Floor Show) (1965/2017), the first of the artist’s immersive installations to transform the intense repetition of her earlier paintings and works on paper into a perceptual and participatory experience. The exhibition debuts one of Kusama’s most recent rooms to Washington, DC, audiences.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Nagano, in 1929. Today, she continues to produce paintings at her studio in Tokyo. She studied traditional Nihonga(Japanese-style) painting in Kyoto and moved to New York City in 1958. There, she was active in avant-garde circles during the formative years of pop art and minimalism, exhibiting her work alongside such artists as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and Allan Kaprow—figures who have cited Kusama as influential to the development of assemblage, environmental art, and performative practices.
Kusama exhibited widely in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands in the mid-’60s, participating in exhibitions with artists associated with Nul, ZERO, and the New Tendency in Europe, where she began developing her interest in the optics and interactive elements of mirrors, electric lights, sound, and kinetics. The artist’s fame grew in the late 1960s through her radical antiwar happenings, which espoused nudity and polka dots in the streets of New York. Kusama returned to Japan in 1973, where she has since resided. In recent years, Kusama has achieved tremendous critical respect as well as celebrity status.
One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection is organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and has been made possible with generous support from La Grande Dame by Veuve Clicquot.
