Yayoi Kusama at the Hirshhorn Museum

An eight-foot-tall Yayoi Kusama sculpture of a polka-dotted pumpkin is on view outside the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington, DC, foreshadowing “Infinity Mirrors,” an exhibition of work by the Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, set to open in February before touring several North American venues.

The pumpkin is a feature in Kusama’s work in various media, and the gourd has appeared in several of her shows, from Connecticut’s Glass House to the Benesse House Art Site in Naoshima, Japan.

Four Kusama paintings of pumpkins have fetched in excess of $1 million at auction, at Sotheby’s Hong Kong and Christie’s New York, all since 2013 according to the artnet Price Database. A four-foot-high sculpture of a polka-dotted pumpkin went for $784,485 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October 2015.

“It seems pumpkins do not inspire much respect,” Kusama has said, according to the museum. “But I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form.”

But it’s not only formal characteristics that make the humble orange squash so appealing to Kusama, who also sees a kind of personality in the pumpkin. “What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness,” she says. “That and its solid spiritual base.”