The Yayoi Kusama exhibit “Infinity Mirrors” at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden http://hirshhorn.si.edu/kusama/ is the hottest show in Washington this year and is almost impossible to get into. Its six mirrored rooms are fantastical and fascinating, but you have to spend about 30-45 minutes in line waiting to get into each one, after which you are allowed exactly 20 SECONDS to view it along with two other people. The museum staff have stopwatches and throw you out when your time is up. Needless to say, not a good situation for picture taking, but we did what we could under the difficult circumstances.

This was a fantastic mirrored room; there were only three people in here when this was taken, hard to believe!

A description of this room from the Hirshhorn:

Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away
2013
Wood, metal, mirrors, plastic, acrylic, rubber, and LED lighting system
Collection of the artist; The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles
Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away is an immersive environment that fosters an out-of-body experience, heightens one’s senses, and produces a repetitive illusion through the use of lights and mirrors. Similar in appearance to stars in the galaxy, hundreds of LED lights hang and flicker in a rhythmic pattern that seems to suspend both space and time. The visitor becomes integral to this work as his or her body activates the environment while simultaneously vanishing into the infinite space. The ethereal nature of the installation can be traced back to the early 2000s, when Kusama began making dimly lit mirrored rooms, a departure from her earlier brightly colored and polka-dotted spaces. Continuing her exploration of the transience of life and the inevitability of death, this installation creates a harmonious and quiet place for visitors to contemplate their existence, reflect on the passage of time, and think about their relationship to the outer world.

‘Ornament reflections, posted earlier: