Dots, Mirrors, and Infinity: Yayoi Kusama in Amsterdam

What does it mean to keep painting until your very last days, at 97 years old, from a hospital room? For Yayoi Kusama, it seems it was simply the only way she knew how to exist.

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has just opened what is already one of the most emotionally loaded art exhibitions of the year, a sweeping retrospective of the Japanese artist who passed away in August 2026, just two weeks before the opening. A celebration that became a farewell.

Seven decades in one building

The exhibition spans Kusama's entire career: from her early work in Japan, through her radical New York years in the 1960s, all the way to canvases she completed in 2025 from her final hospital stay. Around 50 of the works on display have never been shown in Europe before, sourced from Japanese museums in Tokyo and her hometown of Matsumoto. Curator Leontine Coelewij describes it as a landmark moment for longtime fans and first-timers alike.

One last room of infinite reflections

The emotional centerpiece is a brand-new Infinity Mirrored Room, the last major installation Kusama collaborated on before her death. Reached by escalator and placed at the very end of the exhibition, it wraps the visitor in cascading polka dots reflected endlessly across mirrors, walls, and floor. Where the room ends and you begin is anybody's guess. Kusama spent decades turning personal obsession (hallucinations, repetition, a voluntary lifetime in a psychiatric clini) into some of the most recognisable art of the 20th century!

The exhibition runs at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, until January 17, 2027.

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