Information technology well-nigh sounds like conceptual art. Put together an exhibition by 1 of the world'due south most popular artists, have it all ready to become, only so tuck it abroad out of public view—for more than two years.

Now finally opening April 1 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to timed tickets, "Ane with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection" serves as a coda and summary of the Smithsonian museum's 2017 blockbuster "Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors" that bankrupt all records earlier it went on a five-terminate North American tour. Information technology was the celebrated Kusama infinity mirror rooms that helped the museum double its attendance in 2017 to ane.2 million. The touring exhibition to Seattle, Los Angeles, Toronto, Cleveland and Atlanta drew another 8,000,000 over the following two years.

Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli's Field by Yayoi Kusama's, 1965/2017
In Yayoi Kusama'sInfinity Mirror Room—Phalli'due south Field(1965/2017), a field of ruddy polka-dotted tubers sculptures seem to go on forever. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts © Yayoi Kusama, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, photograph by Matailong Du

With just five of the artist's works, the new showcase of Hirshhorn holdings of Kusama, the highest-paid living female artist and probably the best-loved living contemporary creative person in the world, may seem modest. Go along in mind, nevertheless, that 2 of them contain infinity.

Kusama'south works were perfect for a selfie age—with patrons capturing their visits within the enclosures posed against the vast, forever-repeated lights and imagery. The event was a sensation. The buzz it created was like the infinity rooms themselves with the images endlessly promoting the fine art through social media posts.

Merely the pieces were as well the worst for a Covid age.

The prospect of crowds and confined viewing spaces made the new show "One With Eternity" impossible to open even after the museums began welcoming back visitors after the months-long Covid-19 closures.

Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart Is Dancing into the Universe (2018)
Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart is Dancing Into the Universe travels adjacent to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in New York state. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro, London/Venice. © Yayoi Kusama. Purchased jointly by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, photo by Matailong Du

For the 2017 exhibition, visitors were limited to a timed 20 seconds in each Infinity Mirror Room before being ushered out. That stay the artist has increased to xxx seconds for the new installation.

Of the ii new rooms, Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli's Field (Flooring Show) is a 2017 reimagining of what was the get-go such mirrored room by the creative person in 1965, at a time when the Tokyo-born artist was making her name in New York engaging in all manner of influential artistic approaches, from big abstruse paintings to smaller soft sculptures. The mirrored room is filled with a field of red polka-dotted tubers sculptures. They seem to go on forever reflected in the mirrors on all sides in the chamber.

Yayoi Kusama, 1965
Yayoi Kusama poses in a 1965 installation view ofInfinity Mirror Room—Phalli's Field, 1965, at the Castellane Gallery in New York City. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts; Victoria Miro; David Zwirner © Yayoi Kusama, photo by Eikoh Hosoe

For the artist growing up in Japan, her childhood was divers by trauma afterwards her female parent insisted that she follow her male parent when he left the firm to spy on his many extramarital affairs. Her works, many of them defined by phallus shapes, are a response to that childhood feel with art being a way for her to channel a life-long struggle with mental health issues. "For Kusama, she calls this psychosomatic fine art," Johnson says. For decades, the 93-twelvemonth-old artist has lived voluntarily as a patient in a mental hospital not far from her Tokyo studio.

"She used fine art every bit a tool to overcome her fears about things. When she talks about creating the phalli that are lining the floor in Phalli'southward Field, and laying down in them, that is her overcoming a fear of sexual practice. That was her overcoming a fright of the violence that she associated with the phallus."

The other workInfinity Mirrored Room—My Middle is Dancing Into the Universe, from 2018, is one of Kusama's latest such works. Information technology'due south filled with black paper lanterns of various sizes, whose white dots shift colors from yellows to reds, to blues—and are likewise endlessly multiplied within the mirrored sleeping accommodation.

The slice was acquired jointly with the Buffalo AKG Museum in New York, which presented some other challenge caused by the years-long filibuster: The Buffalo museum is undergoing renovation and reopens in the start half of 2023 and will be requiring the Infinity Mirror Room, which ways the Hirshhorn window to have it on brandish would be shortened the longer they waited to open.

As it is, the exhibition volition be up longer than many of the museum's shows—most eight months until information technology closes November 27, 2022.

Pumpkin, Yayoi Kusama, 2016
Pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama, 2016, is an 8-foot tall, 1,800-pound sculpture, which visitors will enjoy its ain immersive environment in a specially painted orangish room with its ain carefully placed black dots on the floors, wall and ceiling. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts © Yayoi Kusama, drove of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, photo by Matailong Du
Flowers–Overcoat by Yayoi Kusama, 1964
Also on view is Flowers–Overcoat by Yayoi Kusama, 1964. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, © Yayoi Kusama, photo past Lee Stalsworth

It also happens to coincide with two other strong exhibitions past gimmicky women artists—a major survey of Laurie Anderson and Toyin Ojih Odutola's similarly immersive exhibition. Coming this summertime is an exhibition of women and non-binary artists in the collection. "Nosotros feel like it'due south this happy accident," Johnson says of the confluence.

The hope is that visitors volition explore other parts of the museum as they await their timed entry into the Kusama exhibition. The Kusama tickets will exist distributed on a first-come, get-go served basis starting at nine:30 a.thou. on the museum plaza on days it is open. Museum members tin can volume their timed-entry passes online in advance. While waiting in line for the infinity mirrors, there are the other Kusama works in "One with Eternity" to consider, the largest of which is the 2016 Pumpkin, a spotted yellowish outdoor delight that is getting its first indoor showing. The viii-foot tall, one,800-pound sculpture becomes its own immersive surround in a specially painted orange room with its own carefully placed blackness dots on the floors, wall and ceiling.

"The Kusama studio is incredibly specific about everything, down to the placement of the polka dots," Johnson says. "We had to become dorsum and along with them a number of times."

The oldest work in the show is an early painting, The Hill, 1953 A (No. xxx) that seems more subtle than her later work, simply shows "intimate images of her hallucinations as they were happening from the time she was a very small kid," Johnson says. "Then she started thinking more than sculpturally."

Flowers—Overcoat, from 1964, reflects the beginnings of her foray into a soft three-dimensional work that would influence such popular artists of the twenty-four hours as Claes Oldenburg.

But the Infinity Mirror Rooms, whose presence acquired lines around the museum 5 years agone, are undoubtedly the showstoppers of the exhibition. Why, though, are they and then popular?

In ane sense, they embrace a trend in contemporary art to immerse or envelop the viewer, Johnson says. "They're giving people this experience of being physically overwhelmed in a space that produces a sort of awe. That ability to elicit awe and curiosity and amazement, and to feel similar you're in a space that'south unlike any space you lot've ever been in, is one that people are seeking. We are in a time where people are acquiring experiences similar they acquire possessions."

They besides similar to share them as selfies on social media. "It only happens then organically—all these forces collided to both create this experience that people are craving, only also information technology'southward marketing itself," Johnson says. "The craze is spreading. It's similar a wildfire. Kusama-mania!"

Art Sensation Yayoi Kusama Wraps Visitors in Polka Dots, Pumpkins and a World Without End
The Hill A (No. 30)by Yayoi Kusama,1953 in gouache, pastel, oil paint, and wax on newspaper is the oldest piece of work in the exhibition. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden © Yayoi Kusama, photograph by Cathy Carver

Still, there's something deeper. "There is a weight and a gravity to them that is rooted in a very honest and personal exploration that this artist has been engaged in for decades. She's been creating art for more than seventy years now, and her art shows a remarkable consistency of vision," Johnson says.

The artist has penned a galvanizing message for these times and addressed "To the Whole Globe." Information technology can be read at length on museum's website, but it opens with these words:

Though it glistens just out of achieve, I go along to pray for promise to smooth through

Its glimmer lighting our way

This long awaited great cosmic glow. . .

Her work is not just characterized by what she gains for her own stability, says Johnson. "Information technology'south something that starts equally a personal experience, but and then, by her desire to understand, to brand sense of that experience and to share it with others."

That was clear in the last exhibition that included then many large Infinity Net paintings that led to the Infinity Mirror Rooms. The idea of the smaller survey is to show how the museum's drove is striving to enact this progression as well. Only Johnson says it's as well to secure Kusama's legacy for a career in which she was most forgotten for several decades earlier her soaring comeback to the public eye.

"We're very cognizant of the fact that that's a trajectory that often happens for female artists, and we really desire to cement her legacy both within our drove at the Smithsonian, and equally part of the story of art and art making in the 20th and 21st century. She's such a key player, and that needs to be remembered."

"One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection" opens at the Smithsonian'southward Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Apr 1 and runs through Nov 27, 2022. Access to the museum is free, but same-day, simply timed-admission passes to the exhibition will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.

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