The Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art has published a tribute to Yayoi Kusama, an artist represented in its collection, in a message posted on 2 September 2026. The museum offers its condolences and gives no cause of death. Kusama’s studio, in an announcement dated 27 August 2026, said she died at a hospital in Tokyo on 14 August 2026 at the age of 97.
“Upon receiving the news of the death of Yayoi Kusama, an artist in our collection, we offer our heartfelt condolences,” the museum said in its announcement. The statement places Kusama’s death in the context of the institution’s longstanding relationship with her work.
In 1987, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art held a solo exhibition devoted to Kusama. The museum described the presentation as having been organised before any other public museum in Japan had mounted a solo exhibition of the artist, making it an early institutional introduction to her practice in the country.
The museum also holds ‘Pumpkin’, identified in its statement as one of Kusama’s representative works. Together with the 1987 exhibition, the work forms part of the institution’s connection to an artist whose career it says it introduced at an early stage.
The Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, based in Kitakyūshū, Japan, did not announce a related exhibition, memorial programme or other event alongside its tribute. Its statement focused on Kusama’s death, the museum’s collection and the 1987 solo exhibition.
