You don't need to be an art aficionado to spot a Yayoi Kusama. Her polka dots, oversized pumpkins, and Infinity Mirror Rooms have become some of the most recognisable motifs in contemporary art, appearing everywhere from the world's great museums to Louis Vuitton's handbags.
But that familiarity shouldn't overshadow the scale of Kusama's career, who continued working until she died on August 14, aged 97. Over more than seven decades, she worked across painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and fashion, becoming a key figure in New York's avant-garde scene in the 1960s before finding a new and much wider audience later in life.
From pieces permanently on display in hotels to dedicated museums and a major forthcoming retrospective in Amsterdam, these are the best places to stay and see one of the biggest contemporary artists of the 21st century.
Related article: Skip the Museums, These Are the Luxury Art Hotels Worth Traveling For
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Clara Arte at Inhotim, Brazil
Inhotim's Yayoi Kusama Gallery Clara Arte is unusual in the fact that it is found inside the art destination. The property sits within Inhotim, the sprawling contemporary-art institution and botanical garden outside Belo Horizonte, and hotel guests receive access to the grounds on days when the institution is closed to the general public. Its dedicated Kusama gallery contains works including I'm Here, But Nothing, and Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity. The hotel itself is, somewhat unsurprisingly, more on the artsy boutique side, but the real experience of staying here is found in the hotel's back garden.
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Four Seasons Hotel Washington, DC
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden's collection In Washington DC, the concierge at The Four Seasons can organize private art tours and visits to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which is home to one of the more significant Kusama holdings in the US. Having collected her work since 1996, the museum has acquired five pieces, including two of her celebrated Infinity Mirror Rooms, and several ballooned sculptures in the gardens.
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Bvlgari Hotel Tokyo, Japan
The Yayoi Kusama Museum A visit to the artist’s home city and a stop in Tokyo's Yayoi Kusama Museum, the only museum in the world dedicated solely to the artist. Bvlgari Hotel Tokyo makes a suitably polished base for the visit, with the hotel offering bespoke cultural experiences and promoting programming at the museum to its guests. The museum itself is a different proposition from seeing a single Kusama in a hotel lobby. Its exhibitions allow visitors to follow the artist's work across different periods and media, while its deliberately limited admission keeps the experience relatively intimate. Tickets are timed, and demand can be high, so ask the hotel to help with the planning.
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The Peninsula Beverly Hills, LA
Dots Obsession (1998) You could spend a week in Los Angeles chasing great art, but staying at The Peninsula Beverly Hills, you only need to walk as far as dinner. Kusama's Dots Obsession is installed in The Belvedere, the hotel's fine-dining restaurant, where it forms part of a collection of contemporary art assembled for the property. It's an apt setting for a work where the dot signifies something that can multiply, consume, and eventually dissolve the individual into a larger pattern. But ironic or not, it is also one of the rare occasions when you can encounter a significant Kusama work without having to make an art appointment at all.
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Hamilton Princess & Beach Club, Bermuda
Pumpkin The Hamilton Princess' substantial private art collection spills out beyond the hotel's interiors, with work by artists including Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Kusama displayed around the grounds of the so-called ‘Pink Palace’ property. Her pumpkin sits among the hotel's outdoor artworks, bringing one of the artist's most familiar forms into a setting of palms, bright blue waters, and pastel Bermuda architecture. The hotel offers art tours, or guests can discover it on their own island time, between relaxing around the pool, restaurant, and waterfront.
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Hotel Royal Classic Osaka, Japan
Lizard (1989) and Butterfly (1989) Not every hotel needs to come with an enormous yellow pumpkin. At Hotel Royal Classic Osaka, Kusama's work is considerably more intimate. The hotel's Art in the Hotel program includes two Kusama screen prints from 1989, Lizard and Butterfly, displayed on different floors of the property. They offer a quieter glimpse of the artist's work, with the garish and bright polka dots nowhere to be seen. The hotel itself is worth a closer look, too: designed by Kengo Kuma, it incorporates the façade of the former Shin-Kabukiza Theatre. Together, this is a particularly good option for travelers interested in the less theatrical side of Kusama's practice.
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Mandarin Oriental Conservatorium, Amsterdam
The Stedelijk Museum From September 11, 2026 through January 17, 2027, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam will stage a major retrospective covering more than seven decades of Kusama’s career. It was conceived before her death but has now taken on a different significance following her passing. The Mandarin Oriental Conservatorium is hard to beat: the hotel sits on Museumplein, practically beside the Stedelijk, meaning the exhibition can be folded into a long weekend rather than treated as a cross-city expedition. Given the scale of Kusama's career – and that this will be the first major retrospective following her death – it is likely to be one of the year's most significant opportunities to see her work together.
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The Peninsula New York
The MoMA, New York For culture vultures, the Peninsula New York makes an art-filled stay almost too easy. The hotel is minutes from MoMA, and its Peninsula Academy can offer guests private tours of the museum before or after public opening hours, led by an art historian. MoMA holds an extensive body of more than 100 pieces of her work, charting her career from her early paintings through to her experiments with repetition and infinity.
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Conrad Los Angeles
The Broad museum At The Broad, Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away surrounds visitors with mirrored space and pinpricks of light, creating the illusion of an infinite universe. Guests staying at Conrad Los Angeles don't have far to go to experience it. The hotel is just a five-minute walk from the museum and offers a dedicated Broad experience through its concierge, who can help secure tickets to the notoriously sought-after room. The Broad offers private tours before and after opening hours.
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Benesse House, Naoshima, Japan
Pumpkin (2022) There are few more satisfying places to encounter Kusama than Naoshima. And at Benesse House, art is the reason the hotel exists in the first place. Designed by Tadao Ando as part of the Benesse Art Site, the property places contemporary art directly into the landscape of the Seto Inland Sea, including Kusama's famous yellow-and-black pumpkin that sits outside Benesse House Museum. The original sculpture, installed in 1994, was destroyed by a typhoon in 2021; Kusama created a replacement that returned to the same spot the following year.
