Yayoi Kusama museum opens to sellout crowds
A MUSEUM featuring the works of avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama, who gained worldwide fame through her use of motifs such as polka dots and pumpkins, opened Oct 1 in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, with tickets already sold out for this year.
The Yayoi Kusama Museum offers tickets that are valid for 90-minute viewing sessions, with four time slots per day.
Kusama, 88, has grown in popularity in recent years, with multiple international exhibits. The 2014 event in Central and South America attracted the highest number of visitors in the world.
This year’s exhibition that ran February to May at the National Art Center, Tokyo, drew about 520,000 visitors.
Amid such popularity, an increasing number of fans called for a facility where they could appreciate a large number of Kusama’s works in one setting. The building that now houses the museum was once used for her staff to hold meetings with curators and officials from museums and galleries to select artwork to be exhibited.
Earlier this year, the artist established the Yayoi Kusama Foundation, which manages the facility.
Of the building’s five stories aboveground and one storey below, the museum devotes the second to fifth floors to exhibition space, and will rotate items on display twice a year.
In celebration of her museum opening, an inaugural event titled “Creation is a Solitary Pursuit, Love is What Brings You Closer to Art” will run through Feb 25. — WP-Bloomberg