Yoko Ono will stage her first solo museum exhibition in Southern California on the Broad museum this spring. The legendary 92-year-old artist, activist and spouse of John Lennon is about to open her present, “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” on Might 23. The interactive exhibition, organized in collaboration with Tate Fashionable in London, will run by means of Oct. 11, 2026, the Broad introduced Thursday.
One of many first issues friends will see after they method the museum throughout Ono’s present can be an outside set up created utilizing the Broad’s olive timber from its outside plaza. These can be remodeled into “wish trees” for the town — a nod to an set up that Ono first created in 1996 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica. Viewers can be invited to put in writing needs on tags and connect them to the branches.
Yoko Ono, “Peace Is Power,” Tate Fashionable, Blavatnik Constructing, 2024.
(Oliver Cowling / Tate)
Ono has been a riveting, beloved and generally controversial drive within the worlds of music, artwork and popular culture for the reason that early Nineteen Sixties when she turned related to New York’s John Cage-inspired Fluxus motion — shaped by a group of experimental artists who primarily based their work in efficiency apply and avant-garde ideas.
From the beginning, Ono’s artwork was performative and interactive. It was additionally knowledgeable by the trauma of residing in Tokyo throughout World Conflict II, an expertise that will feed her lifelong dedication to peace, love and understanding between folks and communities.
Her positivity famously resonated with Lennon upon their first assembly in 1966 at London’s Indica Gallery the place Ono was establishing an exhibition of conceptual, interactive artwork. One of many items featured a ladder with a magnifying glass on the high. When Lennon climbed the ladder and appeared by means of the magnifying glass, he made out the phrase “yes,” written in small letters on a canvas hooked up to the ceiling.
“So it was positive. I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘no’ or ‘f— you’ or something, it said ‘yes,’” Lennon mentioned in an interview with Individuals about his first assembly with Ono.
“Bed-In” on the Amsterdam Hilton, Netherlands, 1969.
(Henry Pessar / Yoko Ono)
Heyler additionally famous that the museum rearranged its calendar to make room for Ono’s present with a purpose to “quickly bring its timely themes to L.A.”
The Broad present will characteristic Ono’s interactive “instruction” displays from the mid-Fifties to the current. These items characteristic temporary texts that counsel actions for friends to finish or ponder. Viewers may also see the typescript drafts for her 1964 e book, “Grapefruit,” which incorporates greater than 200 directions in the type of music, portray, occasions, poetry and objects.
Ono’s work as an activist may also be highlighted by means of supplies and ephemera utilized in her peace campaigns, together with protests completed in collaboration with Lennon corresponding to “Acorn Event” (1968) and “Bed Peace” (1969), wherein the husband and spouse staged bed-in occasions in Amsterdam and Montreal the place they sat in mattress and took questions from the press in an effort to talk out in opposition to the Vietnam Conflict.
“Cut Piece,” 1964, carried out in “New Works of Yoko Ono,” Carnegie Corridor, New York. Filmed by David and Albert Maysles, movie, 16mm, black and white, and sound (stereo), 8 min, 27 sec.
(Yoko Ono)
There may also be loads of movie and video within the exhibition, together with footage of “Cut Piece,” a legendary piece of efficiency artwork first staged in 1964 at Yamaichi Corridor, Kyoto, wherein Ono sat quietly whereas the viewers reduce away items of her clothes.
