{"id":84720,"date":"2025-10-17T17:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84720\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:13:08","slug":"yoko-ono-retrospective-spanning-70-years-of-work-comes-to-museum-of-contemporary-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84720\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoko Ono Retrospective Spanning 70 Years Of Work Comes To Museum Of Contemporary Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

DOWNTOWN \u2014 A comprehensive, touring exhibit of Yoko Ono\u2019s art opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art this weekend, spanning about 70 years of work and featuring 200 pieces, including large installations, a music room, film, photography and interactive art.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoko Ono: Music of the Mind\u201d opened last year at the Tate Modern in London and is making an exclusive U.S. stop in Chicago. It opens Saturday and runs through Feb. 22 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave.<\/p>\n

While many people may know Ono as a public figure and musician, Jamillah James, the Museum of Contemporary Art\u2019s Manilow senior curator, hopes this exhibit shows people the breadth and depth of her career and life as an artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exhibition is really a fantastic capsule of the tremendous body of work that [Ono] has across media,\u201d she said. \u201cI would love for people to come to the exhibition with an open mind [and] set aside any preconceived options that they might have about Yoko and really just engage with the incredible intellectual work that she\u2019s done, which is centered in encouraging people to imagine, to think, to perform, to engage with the world around them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cPEACE is POWER\u201d by Yoko Ono features walls and windows covered with the phrase in dozens of languages. Credit: Filipe Braga<\/p>\n

The exhibit is arranged chronologically across several rooms \u2014 following Ono from New York to Tokyo to London and then back to New York, James said. It opens with instruction paintings, which are text-based works written in Japanese with an English counterpart, telling the viewer how to create a piece of art.<\/p>\n

For example, in \u201cSmoke Painting,\u201d Ono tells viewers to \u201clight canvas or any finished painting with a cigarette for any length of time. See the smoke movement. The painting ends when the whole canvas or painting is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

That concept of collaboration and participation is a central theme in Ono\u2019s artwork, James said. In other works, Ono invites people to shake hands through a canvas, hammer a nail into the surface of a painting and write their thoughts and ideas on a wall.<\/p>\n

In Ono\u2019s \u201cHelmets (Pieces of Sky),\u201d an installation from 2001, she invites viewers to take a puzzle piece from helmets hanging from the ceiling, \u201creferencing the violent fragmenting of hope through war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Yoko Ono\u2019s \u201cHelmets (Pieces of Sky)\u201d is an installation from 2001 which invites viewers to take a puzzle piece from helmets hanging from the ceiling, \u201creferencing the violent fragmenting of hope through war.\u201d Credit: Provided<\/p>\n

\u201cPerformance is so central to Yoko\u2019s work over the years that I think that is a primary through line,\u201d James said. \u201cIt really activates the viewer, in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibit also showcases Ono\u2019s collaborative spirit with other artists, working with Japanese filmmakers on pieces like \u201cAos,\u201d a short film from 1964, and her partners Anthony Cox and John Lennon.<\/p>\n

While this show was originally organized by Tate Modern Curator Juliet Bingham and Patrizia Dander, Gropius Bau\u2019s deputy director of curatorial affairs, James made her own additions to Chicago\u2019s iteration.<\/p>\n

James was introduced to Ono through her music, so the exhibit features a slightly expansive music room, where people can lounge on bean bag chairs while listening to her songs.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cYoko Ono: Music of the Mind\u201d opened at Tate Modern in London last year and has also been displayed at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in D\u00fcsseldorf. Credit: Provided<\/p>\n

James also added gallery performances, activations of Ono\u2019s 1964 book \u201cGrapefruit\u201d and various participatory artworks. For example, \u201cMend Piece\u201d from 1966 allows visitors to assemble broken ceramics, like mugs and saucers, and place them on shelves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exhibition is an important one. It has been some time since there\u2019s been a major presentation of Yoko\u2019s work in the United States,\u201d James said. \u201cThere are many points of entry with this exhibition, for people who are less acquainted with Yoko\u2019s work and people that are super fans, they\u2019ll find something to really engage with. \u2026 I think it demands repeated viewings, but it is a really fantastic testament to the power of the imagination [and] of people to enact small changes in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very timely exhibition with everything that\u2019s happening in the world and right now in Chicago, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

As visitors make their way through, the final piece they\u2019ll come across is \u201cSky TV,\u201d which showcases a live feed of the sky above the gallery it\u2019s being displayed in. The piece is meant to mimic a window. Ono created the work because she lived in a windowless New York apartment.<\/p>\n

James thought it was \u201ca nice way to end the exhibition,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Museum of Contemporary Art\u2019s iteration of \u201cYoko Ono: Music of the Mind\u201d closes with \u201cSky TV,\u201d which is a live feed of the sky above the museum. Credit: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture G<\/p>\n

While Ono does have some ties to Chicago \u2014 her first permanent artwork in America, the \u201cSky Landing\u201d sculpture, sits in Jackson Park, and her song \u201cWalking on Thin Ice\u201d was in part inspired by visiting Chicago and seeing Lake Michigan \u2014 her presence here is \u201cmuted,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

Bringing such a massive exhibit to Chicago is \u201ca serious responsibility\u201d and one that aligns with the Museum of Contemporary Art\u2019s history, James said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis institution, its foundations were built on performance,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were a very early supporter of artists working in conceptualism and performance art. There were Fluxus-related events at the MCA, Dick Higgins and Allison Knowles had early interactions with the MCA. \u2026 So this show is very much aligned with our history as an institution and our deep support of major art historical figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cChicago is a town that has many, many creative artists working here \u2026 so it just feels at home here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DOWNTOWN \u2014 A comprehensive, touring exhibit of Yoko Ono\u2019s art opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-84720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}