Louis Vuitton’s duo of Osaka exhibitions celebrate the house’s deep-rooted relationship with Japan

By Pune Media On Jul 16, 2025

An ‘all-encompassing voyage’ is how Louis Vuitton describes an expansive new exhibition, ‘Visionary Journeys’, which unfolds in Osaka’s Nakanoshima Museum of Art this summer. Coinciding with the World Expo Osaka Kansai 2025, and marking 170 years since Louis Vuitton was founded, it continues the house’s deep-rooted relationship with the country – Louis Vuitton has collaborated with numerous Japanese artists and designers, from Rei Kawakubo to Takeshi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama, and hosted its Cruise 2018 show at the Miho Museum, Kyoto.

Louis Vuitton opens two new exhibitions in Osaka, Japan

(Image credit: Jeremie Souteyrat for Louis Vuitton)

Indeed, Kusama – who is responsible for some of Louis Vuitton’s most distinctive, dot-covered handbags, part of a collaboration which began in 2012 – is being celebrated in a coinciding exhibition, also in Osaka (it is the latest iteration of Fondation Louis Vuitton’s ‘Hors-les-murs’ scheme, which aims to bring the Paris institution’s collection of contemporary art to a wider, international audience). Titled ‘Yayoi Kusama – Infinity’, it features a wide-ranging selection of hallucinatory works by the celebrated artist, including her ‘Infinity’ rooms, which use mirrors to give the illusion you are standing within a limitless space (and often feature her most distinctive motifs, from dots to pumpkins). Kusama herself calls the act of standing in such spaces as one of ‘self-obliteration’.

(Image credit: Jeremie Souteyrat for Louis Vuitton)

Comprising over 1,000 objects, ‘Visionary Journeys’, meanwhile, is rooted in Louis Vuitton’s near-two-century history, and its foundation in travel – both real and imagined (the eponymous Louis Vuitton, after journeying to Paris by foot in 1837, would become known as a trunk maker for the era’s burgeoning travelling classes). Presenting a more abstracted view of this history, ‘Visionary Journeys’ takes place over 12 ‘chapters’ – from ‘Origins’, which links the house’s early trunks to contemporary iterations of the signature object, to ‘Expeditions’, which traces more adventurous innovations (among them, the ‘Secrétaire Bureau Stokowski’, a travelling desk, and a hardy zinc version of the trunk).

(Image credit: Jeremie Souteyrat for Louis Vuitton)

Another chapter explores the links between Louis Vuitton and Japan more closely – from the ‘Japonisme’ of early Louis Vuitton creations, to the collaborations with Murakami, Kusama, Kawakubo, and NIGO – and takes place amid a unique display of floating tatami platforms (a book on the subject, ‘Louis Vuitton Japan’, published by Rizzoli, will also launch in July). Meanwhile, in the atrium of the Endō Katsuhiko-designed museum, guests will find eight enormous trunks constructed from washi, a traditional Japanese paper. Lit from within, they form lanterns, a suitably transportative entranceway to the exhibition, which has been curated by Florence Müller and designed by Shohei Shigematsu of OMA.

‘Visionary Journeys’ at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, runs until 17 September 2025.

‘Yayou Kusama: Infinity – Selected Works from the Collection’ runs at Espace Louis Vuitton Osaka until 12 January 2026

louisvuitton.com

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