'Kusama: Cosmic Nature,’ at the New York Botanical Garden

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) has recently become even more magical with the addition of a Yayoi Kusama installation running through October 31. It is a stunning sensory art experience that delights and transforms at every turn.

Kusama’s creations are among the world’s most expensive and revered artworks—her 1960 canvas White No. 28 recently sold at auction for $7.1 million—but in the beginning, she struggled to find her way after leaving her family’s plant and seeds nursery in Japan to try to make it as an artist in New York City. On display at NYBG are some of her earliest pencil sketches of plants, seeds, and flowers, which illustrate her passionate relationship to the natural world. 

I Want to Fly to the Universe

Curator and postwar Japanese art specialist Mika Yoshitake, Ph.D., seamlessly interweaves Kusama’s work throughout the garden to the point that you can’t imagine it didn’t always belong there. Viewers will be enraptured by massive tree trunks wrapped in red and white polka dots, oversized ceramic laughing flowers peeking out of ponds, and huge painted pumpkins.

Kusama created the show’s extraordinary flagship work—Dancing Pumpkin—last year at the age of 91. Children are particularly taken with that sculpture as well as with a surprisingly profound interactive installation called Flower Obsession obliteration greenhouse. Each person who enters that installation gets to add a bright red flower sticker to the piece, which causes it to change and evolve with every visitor.

Flower Obsession (2017/2021) obliteration greenhouse

Also notable is one of  Kusama’s famous infinity rooms, Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity, and Narcissus Garden, which consists of 1,400 stainless-steel spheres scattered in the Native Plant Garden pool. Keep your eyes open for lots of wildlife—including tadpoles, frogs, turtles, and birds that lounge around and play on top of the art in ways that would be forbidden to mere humans but no doubt would delight Kusama.

Even those with little interest in her art will be taken with the arresting beauty of the NYBG and its thousands of varieties of flowers and plants as well as its paths, secret gardens, and ponds filled with schools of friendly koi. Hudson Garden Grill is an excellent farm-to-table option for lunch, and the NYBG gift shop includes an unusual selection of books, gardening tools, and assorted whimsical items—including plenty of Yayoi Kusama merchandise.

Tips: Purchase the Garden & Gallery Pass, which allows access to all indoor and outdoor installations and galleries, and secure lunch reservations well in advance. If possible, also, plan to attend early on a weekday. The museum staff is well-equipped and organized, but around 1 p.m. the crowds swell, and waits become longer despite controlled and timed entry of spectators.