The article features an interview with Alexandra Munroe, senior curator at large for global arts at the Guggenheim Museum, discussing Yayoi Kusama's inclusion in the new exhibition "Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now." Munroe explains that Kusama, now 97, anticipated many art movements including pop art but was historically excluded from the pop art canon despite showing with Andy Warhol as early as 1962 and garnering more press than him in 1968. The exhibition features Kusama's "INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM – DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE (2019)" and one of her "Infinity Net" paintings.
This matters because Kusama's exclusion from pop art history exemplifies how women and neurodiverse artists have been sidelined by the art world. Munroe, a leading Kusama scholar who curated the artist's first major New York retrospective in 1989, argues that Kusama's work defies easy categorization—spanning pop, abstraction, happenings, feminism, and experimental film—making her a uniquely important figure whose full art historical significance is only now being recognized. The Guggenheim's decision to include her in a major pop survey signals a long-overdue correction to the historical record.