From the archives: Yayoi Kusama, the princess of polka dots

Yayoi Kusama, one of Japan’s most celebrated artists, renowned for her signature polka dots that covered paintings, sculptures, and human bodies, died in Tokyo on Aug. 14, 2026, at age 97. In this “Sunday Morning” profile that originally aired Sept. 16, 2012, correspondent Mo Rocca talked with Kusama about her love of creating art, and her lifelong obsession with dots (which she attributed to hallucinations she’d had beginning in childhood). Rocca also visited a major Kusama retrospective at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.