Preview

Yayoi Kusama is world famous for her walk-in mirrored rooms, and her polka dots have become something of a trademark. In our anniversary year, Museum Ludwig is staging a retrospective exhibition of the Japanese artist, offering insights into her more than seventy-year art practice. The major donation gifted to the museum by Peter and Irene Ludwig when it first opened in 1976 included a work by Kusama. In addition to this work, other iconic pieces will be presented alongside works never seen before in Europe. One highlight will be a new Infinity Mirror Room that the artist is installing for Museum Ludwig. Kusama was part of the American network of artists associated with Andy Warhol, but she returned to Japan early on and developed her own unmistakable form of Pop Art. She does not shy away from addressing big issues: pain and death, emotions and illness, war and love. The artist’s biography, experiences, and feelings all feed into her art, making the work mirror her own existence and convey personal messages. Of fundamental importance to her is the philosophy that everything is in a never-ending process of renewal—a process that visitors can experience through her unique and visionary artistic world.

Yayoi Kusama is organized by Museum Ludwig in collaboration with Fondation Beyeler (October 12, 2025–January 25, 2026) and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (September 12, 2026–January 17, 2027). 

The Cologne venue of the exhibition features several large-scale installations that are not part of the exhibition in Basel, such as Kusama's first installation, Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, created in 1963; the environment I'm Here but Nothing (2000 to present), a living space bathed in black light with countless fluorescent adhesive dots; and the imposing, colorfully painted bronze Flowers, which will be installed on the roof terrace of the Museum Ludwig.

Curator: Stephan Diederich

Modernism describes a radical departure from the past and in art a completely new visual idiom. It spread to all spheres of culture and life at a time of significant change and social upheaval in the early twentieth century. Yet, even today, modern art history is still based on the work of white, Western European and North American artists. But how did artists from the black diaspora perceive, evolve, or consciously distance themselves from modernism?

This exhibition shows how modern art has developed in different communities and across places. Based on such movements as the Harlem Renaissance in the United States and Négritude in Europe, Along the Color Line traces the artistic relations between the transatlantic continents and explores their impact on art production today. Assembling works from the Museum Ludwig collection—in which non-European, non-white art is still underrepresented—with new acquisitions and loans, the exhibition presents visual artworks alongside the literature and music of the Black diaspora. 

The show aims to reaffirm the founding mission of Museum Ludwig in our anniversary year of 2026—to highlight voices that have for too long gone unheard.

Curator: Eboa Itondo