Yayoi Kusama Proves The Most Popular Exhibiting Artist In 2014

Yayoi Kusama

The figures are in for the most visited exhibitions of 2014 and Yayoi Kusama’s exhibitions in South and Central America have topped the list with over 9,000 members of the public visiting her exhibition each day.  The 86-year-old Japanese national out performed Jeff Koons with his Whitney Museum and Pompidou retrospectives. 

The artist who lives in a mental health facility across from her studio, was embraced by Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Brasilia averaging 7,957 to 8,936 visitors a day. Jeff Koons’ exhibition attracted 3,869 a day.

London’s National Gallery overtook the Met to be the third most visited art museum last year, with 6.4 million visitors. It was lifted by the popular Veronese show, with 1,135 visitors a day, and Late Rembrandt at the end of the year. The British Museum increased it’s position at 6.7 million, but the most attended institution in the world remains the Louvre, with 9.2 million visitors in 2014. It has topped the survey for the past seven years since the list has been compiled by The Arts Newspaper.

Yayoi Kusama was born March 22, 1929, throughout the artist’s career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colours, repetition and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, it is said that Kusama influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. The artist was sadly forgotten for a time, after departing the New York art scene in the early 1970s, Kusama is now acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan.

In 1973, the artist returned to Japan in ill health, where she began writing visceral and surrealistic novels of a quite shocking nature, short stories, and poetry. Kusama was soon to check herself into the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill, and eventually taking up permanent residence. The artist has been living at the hospital since.

Kusama’s retrospective “Infinite Obsession” was overwhelmed by fans in Mexico, causing a security nightmare. “A Dream I Dreamed” will continue on to New Delhi at the end of 2015. “A Dream I Dreamed” will be on view at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, until 17 May 2015.

Top 10 Museums Rated by Exhibitions Attendance: 

1. Louvre, Paris:  9,260,000

2. British Museum, London: 6,695,213

3. National Gallery, London: 6,416,724

4. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 6,162,147

5. Vatican Museums, Vatican City: 5,891,332

6. Tate Modern, London: 5,785,427

7. National Palace Museum, Taipei: 5,402,325

8. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC: 3,892,459

9. National Museum of Korea, Seoul: 3,536,677

10. Musée d’Orsay, Paris: 3,500,000

Photo: © Artlyst 2015

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