Yayoi Kusama welcomed M+ Board Chairman and Museum Director in Tokyo

M+’s retrospective exhibition Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, now on view in M+ until 14 May 2023, will be on tour to Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from June 2023

M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, announced today that Yayoi Kusama met with Bernard Chan, Chairman of M+ Board, and Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, on 14 March 2023 in Tokyo, Japan. During the meeting, the two M+ representatives shared with the visionary artist the overwhelming public response and critical acclaim for the museum’s first Special Exhibition Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, the artist’s largest retrospective in Asia outside Japan.

Kusama warmly welcomed the two M+ representatives in a tea house in Tokyo on Tuesday, 14 March 2023. She expressed her sincere appreciation to the M+ team for staging the comprehensive career retrospective after four years of close collaboration with her, complemented with a rich series of public programmes that inspire the public to delve deeper into her art and philosophy. Chan and Raffel wished Kusama good health and updated her that the special exhibition has received over 130,000 visitations since its launch on 12 November 2022.

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now to tour to Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

M+ also announced that Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now will be on tour to Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from 27 June to 8 October 2023. Co-curated by Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+ and Mika Yoshitake, independent curator, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will be the most extensive retrospective of Kusama in Spain in the past decade showcasing nearly two hundred artworks.

Bernard Chan, Chairman of M+ Board, says, ‘We are exhilarated to meet global cultural icon Yayoi Kusama in person. Kusama gave us a warm welcome and shared that M+’s meticulously curated exhibition, covering the artist’s prolific and ground-breaking practice that resonates with her times, is truly meaningful to her. Her presence is an incredible expression of confidence in our exhibition and M+, making it a historic presentation.'

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, says, ‘It was Yayoi Kusama's longstanding dream to have a major exhibition on Chinese soil as Chinese poetry had been an inspiration for her from the early days. We are honoured to stage Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now at M+ in Hong Kong and visit Kusama in person, one of the most celebrated and influential artists of our time and share with her the warm and positive public response to our exhibition. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is one of the most influential museums in the world and an iconic landmark among our global audiences. We are thrilled to be able to stage Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, co-curated and produced by M+, in this internationally renowned museum in Spain for the audiences of Europe and beyond.’

Yayoi Kusama says, ‘I am grateful for the love from the M+ team and am touched by the enthusiasm of visitors and the wider public for the exhibition. I hope this retrospective will continue to spread love and good wishes to visitors in Hong Kong and beyond. I will also continue to share love and peace with my wholehearted and lifelong pursuit of art.’

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now at M+ on view until 14 May 2023

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now is M+’s first Special Exhibition currently on view for two more months until Sunday, 14 May 2023. The exhibition is Kusama’s largest retrospective in Asia outside Japan, featuring more than two hundred works from museums and private collections in Asia, Europe, and the United States, the M+ Collection, as well as the artist’s own collection.

Tickets to the exhibition (HKD 240 for adults and HKD 150 for concession), which include access to all M+ galleries, are available for online purchase via the M+ website, West Kowloon Cultural District website, West Kowloon Cultural District App, Cityline, China Travel Service (Hong Kong) Limited, Fliggy, Klook, KKday, and Trip.com. M+ Members and Patrons enjoy exclusive benefits and discounts.

Visitors who purchased tickets for Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now will be granted access to all M+ galleries, while General Admission tickets will entitle visitors to visit all M+ exhibitions except Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now. Admission to the museum’s basement 1 and ground floor, where Pumpkin (2022) and the exhibition Hong Kong: Here and Beyond are on view, will remain free of charge.

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now is supported by Lead Sponsor HSBC together with Major Sponsor HKT, Supporting Sponsors Louis Vuitton, Sino Group, and The Macallan, and Cathay Pacific Airways, Airline Partner.

Remarks

About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, it is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. M+ is a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District
The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.