The Secret of Yayoi Kusama in Pittsburgh - NaBloPoMo 18

 I was at MoMA today. It was bedlam, but that's a whole other story that you are not going to hear about right now. Right now I am merely pointing out that in the MoMA store, there is a whole section dedicated to Yayoi Kusama:

The Yayoi Kusama Collection in the MoMA store.

I mention this just to remind everyone that Yayoi Kusama is kind of a big deal here in New York City. I know she's a big deal because I've seen two things with my own two eyes:

1. Yayoi Kusama basically was let loose to whip up whatever the hell she wanted in the Bronx Botanical Garden a couple years ago. We went there with Bruce and Nardo and yeah, it was a BFD spanning half the park.

2. There was a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room on display at one of the galleries in Chelsea and although I went over there to see it, I did not see it. There was a line around the block and I'm not waiting for six hours to see pretty much anything, despite my curiosity.

The line to spend "one minute"
in the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room in Chelsea

HAD I ONLY KNOWN... all I needed to do was jump a flight to Pittsburgh. 

Yeah, there's not one, but two Yayoi Kusama Infinity Rooms in Pittsburgh and they are like stashed in the way back of a back alley museum. We just happened to go to said museum. While there, I just happened to notice a little sign on a door that looked like it lead to a custodial closet on the back half of some random room on the fifth floor.

And so, I spent some quality time in not one, but two Yayoi Kusama Infinity Rooms. I was in them as long as I bloody wanted to be in there for. I took photos and got up real close to the mirrored walls.

The first Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room in Pittsburgh

The second Infinity Room.
I think these both might qualify as "early works."

I insisted Tom go in and check out the Infinity of colored dots and Infinity of red dots on mannequins too because WHAT A WEIRDLY UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITY. To see a famous Japanese artist with two big permanent exhibits in Pittsburgh which apparently everybody in Pittsburgh is very blasé about.

We might have been the only two people who saw polka dot infinity the whole damn day.