The artist behind some of the world’s most recognisable polka dots, pumpkins and mirrored infinities, Yayoi Kusama, has died at the age of 97. Her studio confirmed she passed away at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14, 2026.
Over a career spanning seven decades, Kusama became one of the most influential and best-loved artists alive, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors to her immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms and turning the humble pumpkin into one of contemporary art’s most iconic motifs. Her work rotated through galleries and exhibitions across the globe, but a handful of her creations have found permanent homes, meaning you can still go and see them for yourself.
Here’s where to find Kusama’s art, wherever you happen to be.
Infinite Accumulation, Liverpool Street Station, London
You might not expect to stumble across a major Kusama sculpture on your commute, but somewhere between the Pret and the departure boards at Liverpool Street, Infinite Accumulation has been greeting travellers outside the Elizabeth Line entrance since 2024. It’s a hundred metres of connected, reflective steel spheres rising ten metres into the air, and Kusama’s largest permanent sculpture anywhere in the world. It’s also her only permanent public artwork in the UK. It was commissioned as part of the Crossrail Art Programme, and its steel spheres catch and warp the City skyline as commuters weave beneath them, turning a station entrance into an accidental hall of mirrors.
Pumpkin, Naoshima, Japan
Perhaps the most photographed of all Kusama’s works, this yellow-and-black spotted pumpkin has sat on the edge of a pier on the ‘art island’ of Naoshima since 1994. It was swept out to sea by a typhoon in 2021 and badly damaged, but a faithful replacement was installed in 2022, reinforced against future storms. Plus, down at Miyanoura Port where the ferries dock, its cheekier sibling awaits. Installed in 2006 and standing four metres tall, the Red Pumpkin lets people climb inside through openings cut straight into its dots, and it glows after dark so it tends to be the first thing you see arriving on the island and the last thing you see leaving.
Read more: Where to see Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkin sculptures in Japan
Tsumari in Bloom, Niigata
Out in the rice terraces of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field, a gigantic dotted flower has stood outside Matsudai Station since 2003, one of more than 800 permanent works scattered across this famously rural stretch of Japan. Kusama herself called it her favourite of all the open-air sculptures she ever made, high praise from an artist who made rather a lot of them, and it stays on permanent display year-round, unlike the triennale’s temporary pieces.
Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo
The Yayoi Kusama Museum is her own five-storey shrine to herself, and rightly so. Housed in a striking white building in Shinjuku since 2017, it runs two rotating exhibitions a year and includes her famous The Princess with the Pea installation. Getting in is its own small ordeal though. Tickets are released two months ahead, on the first of the month, and routinely sell out within minutes. Entry is by 90-minute slot only and there’s no buying at the door, so this is one for the planners rather than the spontaneous.
Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Nagano
Kusama was born in Matsumoto in 1929, and the city’s museum holds a permanent collection of her work. Outside, the giant sculpture from 2002, The Visionary Flowers, greets you before you’ve even reached the door. Inside, the Kusama treatment doesn’t stop at the gallery walls. The vending machines, benches and even the toilets have all had the polka dot makeover, and if you’re lucky you might catch the dotted ‘Boisterous Polka Dot’ bus running between the station and the museum. Consider it the quieter, more personal alternative to fighting the Tokyo crowds.
Ala Moana Center, Honolulu
Not every major artwork lives in a museum; sometimes great art turns up in the most unglamorous places. A six-foot, 1,200-pound bronze pumpkin has sat among this Hawaiian mall’s koi ponds since 2016, installed overnight by a team who worked after closing to get it in place before the next morning’s shoppers arrived. It’s Kusama’s first permanent installation in Hawaii, and the subject wasn’t picked at random. Pumpkins were what her family relied on for food and comfort during the Second World War, so there’s more to this than your average shopping trip sculpture.
Infinity Mirror Rooms, The Broad, Los Angeles
The Broad holds two of Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms in its permanent collection. Step inside one and the mirrored walls take a handful of lights or hanging shapes and multiply them into forever, so you can’t tell where the room ends. Infinity Mirrored Room, The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013) needs an advance reservation, while Longing for Eternity (2017) on the third floor is usually walk-in, though it can close without warning. The Broad’s 2017 Kusama survey pulled an absurd 150,000-person ticket queue, giving you some idea of what you’re dealing with here.
Flowers that Bloom in the Cosmos, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Flowers that Bloom in the Cosmos was commissioned especially for the gallery’s Naala Badu building, which opened in December 2022, and it’s hard to miss. It’s a riot of oversized spotted blooms sitting out on the terrace overlooking Woolloomooloo Bay, lit up day and night. Kusama saw herself and everyone else as a single dot connected to countless others, part of one vast, spotted universe. This sculpture is about as literal a version of that idea as she ever made.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
The NGA has owned The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens since 2018. It’s one of Kusama’s mirror rooms, designed around her pumpkins. You can expect a small mirrored chamber crowded with illuminated, spotted pumpkins that you view through a single peephole, so what’s actually a modestly sized space appears to stretch on forever in every direction. One thing to note though, the work does tour periodically to partner institutions, including recent stints at the Art Gallery of South Australia and Western Plains Cultural Centre, so check the NGA’s website for its current location before you make the trip.
Recommended: The 12 museums everyone should visit in their lifetime.
Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Travel newsletter for all the latest travel news and best stuff happening across the world.