Yayoi Kusama Retrospective at Gropius Bau Postponed Until 2021

With exhibitions by her at the New York Botanical Garden, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and Tate Modern in London already delayed as a result of the pandemic, Yayoi Kusama is facing another postponement of a major presentation originally planned for 2020. The artist’s hotly anticipated retrospective at the Gropius Bau in Berlin, which had been scheduled to open in September, has been pushed to March 2021.

Poised to be the most comprehensive exhibition of Kusama’s work in Germany, the Gropius Bau show will bring together works from throughout the 91-year-old artist’s career as well as a new “Infinity Mirror Room” and installation. The presentation had been set to travel to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland, following its run in Berlin.

The exhibitions planned by Tate Modern, the Hirshhorn Museum, and New York Botanical Garden had also been set to feature Kusama’s sought after “Infinity Mirror Rooms,” which have drawn robust crowds around the world. In 2019, the artist debuted a new “Infinity Mirror Room” at David Zwirner gallery in New York in an exhibition titled “EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE.”

Kusama directly addressed the health crisis in a message she issued in April. In her statement, the artist wrote, “To Covid-19 that stands in our way/I say Disappear from this earth/We shall fight/We shall fight this terrible monster,” urging that “Now is the time to overcome, to bring peace.”