Artist Yayoi Kusama moved from Japan to New York in the late 1950s. Her Accumulations, a series of soft sculptures she began in the early 1960s, consist of various items of furniture covered with stuffed phallic forms, seen by the artist to concretize and subjugate her anxieties about sex. Artmaking has been a lifelong mode of catharsis for Kusama, who notes that hallucinations have inspired many of her now-iconic motifs—from polka dots to pumpkins to her immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms. The white-painted Accumulation on Cabinet No. 1, 1963, in Glenstone’s collection, is covered in phallic protrusions stuck on and around the shelves of a cabinet stacked high with cups and glasses and “fenced in” by chicken wire.

–Karen Vidangos, from the Glenstone Field Guide