Yayoi Kusama's Final Years: Iconic Collaborations and Public Artworks

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who died this month at age 97, left a legacy of iconic projects spanning decades. Her career included major retrospectives at MoMA (1998) and the Whitney (2012) in New York, as well as shows in London (Serpentine 2000, Tate Modern 2012), Paris, and Tokyo. In her later years, she continued to produce notable works and collaborations. In 2023, Louis Vuitton released a limited-edition yellow and black pumpkin handbag, part of a collaboration that began in 2012 under Marc Jacobs; one sold for $151,200 at Christie's in 2024, setting a world record for Louis Vuitton. Her 1966 Venice Biennale installation Narcissus Garden was restaged at locations including 425 Park Avenue, Fort Tilden for MoMA PS1's Rockaway! festival, and the Philip Johnson Glass House. In 2020, she designed packaging for Veuve Clicquot's La Grande Dame 2012, with only 100 numbered editions of the floral work My Heart That Blooms in the Darkness of Night. In August 2024, her site-specific sculpture Infinite Accumulation was installed at Liverpool Street station in London, stretching 109 yards and rising over 10 yards high; it was her first permanent public artwork in the U.K. and her largest public sculpture to date. In 2020, she created Love Flies Up to the Sky for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a balloon derived from her My Eternal Soul paintings with over 300 dots.