More Than 300 Yayoi Kusama Works Take Over A German Museum

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Yayoi Kusama’s Cologne Blockbuster Adds a New Infinity Room and Early Rarities at Museum Ludwig

A new iteration of“Yayoi Kusama” has opened at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, expanding the artist’s career-spanning survey with fresh additions, a newly commissioned Infinity Room, and works that push beyond the museum’s temporary galleries into its largest hall and even onto the roof.

The exhibition follows earlier and forthcoming versions of the project: it arrives after a presentation at Basel’s Fondation Beyeler earlier this year and ahead of an expected stop at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam later this year. Cologne’s edition distinguishes itself with several works not seen in the Basel installation, including Kusama’s first installation,“Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show” (1963), and the fluorescent, dot-saturated environment“I’m Here but Nothing” (2000–), presented here as“I’m Here, but Nothing” (2000/2026).

At Museum Ludwig, the show’s physical footprint is part of its argument. Rather than remaining contained within a single suite of rooms, it extends outward“like one of Kusama’s recurrent tentacles,” as the museum’s layout encourages visitors to move between dense clusters of paintings and drawings, documentary material from her public actions, and immersive installations. The museum’s largest hall now houses the newly commissioned Infinity Room, positioned as a contemporary anchor for a narrative that reaches back to Kusama’s earliest years.

That timeline is unusually literal: the exhibition stretches from the new Infinity Room to Kusama’s first drawing, made around 1934, when she was five. In a statement, the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), now 97, framed the show’s emotional stakes in terms that have long shaped readings of her work.“In my more than 70 years as an artist, I have always been in awe of the wonder of life,” she said.“More than anything, this strong sense of the life force in artistic expression is what has supported me and gave me power to overcome feelings of depression, hopelessness, and sadness. I have been guided by my belief in this power.”

Visitors will recognize Kusama’s signature motifs - pumpkins, polka dots, and the repeated forms that oscillate between play and compulsion - but the Cologne presentation also emphasizes less frequently foregrounded chapters. It includes drawings and paintings from the 1950s, made in the period between her departure from the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts and her move to Seattle.

The exhibition also devotes substantial space to Kusama’s New York years, when she emerged as a highly visible figure in the city’s avant-garde. The show traces her rise in her thirties, noting the encouragement she received from Georgia O’Keeffe, and it situates her soft sculptures in proximity to the downtown scene - including a 1963 SoHo group show in which a work covered with her now-notorious phallic protrusions appeared alongside Claes Oldenburg.

A pivotal moment arrives with“Narcissus Garden” (1966/2026), the installation of mirrored spheres that made Kusama a subject of intense attention at the Venice Biennale after she began selling the work’s 2,000 balls. At Museum Ludwig, the piece is paired with footage from her 1985 performance“Flower of Basara,” creating a dialogue between the artist’s early strategies of spectacle and her later, more explicitly theatrical self-mythology.

The exhibition’s reach extends outdoors as well. On the museum roof, several painted bronze flowers make their exhibition debut, introducing a note of buoyant color against the city’s most commanding landmark: Cologne Cathedral.

Taken together, the Cologne edition of“Yayoi Kusama” underscores how the artist’s practice has moved between intimate mark-making and public-scale environments, between personal vulnerability and a carefully engineered visual language that has become globally legible. With additional versions of the exhibition expected to shift again as it travels, Museum Ludwig’s presentation offers a particularly expansive snapshot - one that insists on Kusama’s long arc, from childhood drawing to newly commissioned immersion.

MENAFN24032026005694012507ID1110903039