A Major Yayoi Kusama Retrospective is Coming to Europe

Summary

• A landmark Yayoi Kusama retrospective will travel across Europe, making stops at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland; Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany; and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands
• The exhibition will survey the artist’s seven-decade-long career and will feature a range of paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings and literature

Immensely iconic and influential, Yayoi Kusama will be the focus of a major retrospective showcase set to land at several museums across the Europe. Co-presented by Swiss Fondation Beyeler, Museum Ludwig in Cologne and Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, the show will survey the entirety of Kusama’s illustrious seven-decade-long career, with new productions, early works making their continental debut and, of course, her celebrated Infinity Mirror Rooms abound.

“Yayoi Kusama is an artist who compels us to see the world through a different lens,” Stedlijk Museum director Rein Wolfs said upon the initial announcement last year. “This exhibition promises to be a feast for the eyes where one can truly lose themselves in her extraordinary art.” Created in close collaboration with the artist and her studio, the retrospective will traverse across mediums, such as painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, collage, “happenings,” live performance, fashion and literature.

Having come up in the New York’s avant-garde movement in the 1960’s, the artist rose to cult status nurturing an expansive artistic universe, characterized through swaths of repeating patterns and structures, creating an signature out of polka dot landscapes and immersive mirrored environments. Ideas of infinity and self-obliteration are often found at the heart of her work, as she takes viewers through her embark past the limits of reality, blurring the lines between the observer and the expanse that lays ahead.

Following the presentation in Switzerland, the country’s first museum show dedicated to the artist, the exhibition will make stops at Museum Cologne from March 14 through August 2, 2026, and Stedelijk Museum from September 11 2026 until January 17, 2027.

Can’t wait until October? A concurrent Kusama presentation, titled Infinity, is now on view at Espace Louis Vuitton in Osaka.

For more updates and information about the European shows, check out Fondation Beyeler’s website.