Next May, one of Yayoi Kusama’s most famous “Infinity Rooms” returns to Dallas, ending an infinitely-Instagrammed museum tour.
The Dallas Museum of Art jointly acquired All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins in 2017 with the Rachofsky Collection, which is also based in Dallas. Like other entries in the series, viewers are invited to step inside a small mirrored room filled with Kusama’s whimsical, often polka-dotted sculptures, in this case, her signature yellow and black pumpkins. The effect is a kaleidoscopic sea of sculptures stretching into oblivion—very selfie-friendly.
All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins is “key to understanding [Kusama’s] practice,” Gavin Delahunty, a contemporary-art curator at the museum, said in a statement in 2017.
Due to its popularity, the installation comes with a recommendation of one to four visitors at a time, though that didn’t prevent property damage during its stint at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. In a headline-grabbing 2017 incident, a visitor tripped on one of the hand-painted acrylic gourds, shattering it in the process, while trying to take a photo. The Washington Post reported at the time that the museum instructed for no security to be in the narrow room with visitors, who are allowed 30 seconds inside of viewing.
A Hirshhorn spokesperson told the Post that the cost of replacing a pumpkin was “negligible,” and the site-specific nature of the installation allows for seemingly endless reconfigurations, all of which are executed in consultation with Kusama.
The 95-year-old Japanese artist is one of the most profitable contemporary artists of today. She grossed $80.9 million at auction last year, beating out David Hockney for the spot of top-selling contemporary artist of 2023 (her most expensive piece sold was the painting A Flower (2014), which fetched nearly $10 million at Christie’s Hong Kong).
Museums are similarly shelling out to add a Kusama to their collection. In June, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced that it had acquired the “Infinity Room” Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love (2023). The installation, consisting of large transparent acrylic dots suspended like a constellation, will remain on view through January of 2025.
As of this June, SFMOMA reported that its Kusama show, “Infinite Love,” had been seen by 170,000 people.
