A groundbreaking comprehensive exhibition showcasing seven decades of Yoko Ono's artistic work has opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The touring exhibit, titled "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind," features approximately 200 pieces spanning the breadth of Ono's creative output, including large-scale installations, film, photography, interactive art, and a dedicated music room. The exhibition runs from Saturday through February 22 at the museum located at 220 E. Chicago Avenue.
The exhibition originally opened at London's Tate Modern last year and is making its exclusive United States stop in Chicago. Jamillah James, the Museum of Contemporary Art's Manilow senior curator, hopes the exhibit will reveal the full scope of Ono's artistic career beyond her public persona as a musician. "This exhibition is really a fantastic capsule of the tremendous body of work that [Ono] has across media," James explained. "I would love for people to come to the exhibition with an open mind [and] set aside any preconceived notions that they might have about Yoko and really just engage with the incredible intellectual work that she's done, which is centered in encouraging people to imagine, to think, to perform, to engage with the world around them."
The exhibition is arranged chronologically across multiple rooms, following Ono's artistic journey from New York to Tokyo to London and back to New York. The display opens with Ono's instruction paintings, which are text-based works written in Japanese with English counterparts that tell viewers how to create art pieces. One notable example is "Smoke Painting," where Ono instructs viewers to "light 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."
Collaboration and participation serve as central themes throughout Ono's artwork, as demonstrated in various interactive pieces. The artist invites visitors to shake hands through a canvas, hammer nails into painting surfaces, and write their thoughts and ideas on walls. In Ono's 2001 installation "Helmets (Pieces of Sky)," viewers are invited to take puzzle pieces from helmets suspended from the ceiling, a work that references the violent fragmentation of hope through war. "Performance is so central to Yoko's work over the years that I think that is a primary through line," James noted. "It really activates the viewer, in a way."
The exhibition also highlights Ono's collaborative spirit with other artists, showcasing her work with Japanese filmmakers on pieces like "Aos," a 1964 short film, as well as collaborations with her partners Anthony Cox and John Lennon. One of the featured installations, "PEACE is POWER," covers walls and windows with the phrase written in dozens of languages, demonstrating Ono's commitment to universal messages of peace and unity.
While the show was originally organized by Tate Modern Curator Juliet Bingham and Patrizia Dander, Gropius Bau's deputy director of curatorial affairs, James made specific additions for the Chicago iteration. Having been introduced to Ono through her music, James created a more expansive music room where visitors can relax on bean bag chairs while listening to Ono's songs. She also incorporated gallery performances, activations of Ono's 1964 book "Grapefruit," and various participatory artworks, including the 1966 "Mend Piece," which allows visitors to assemble broken ceramics like mugs and saucers and place them on shelves.
"This exhibition is an important one. It has been some time since there's been a major presentation of Yoko's work in the United States," James emphasized. "There are many points of entry with this exhibition, for people who are less acquainted with Yoko's work and people that are super fans, they'll find something to really engage with. 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."
The exhibition concludes with "Sky TV," a live feed of the sky above the gallery that mimics a window. Ono originally created this work because she lived in a windowless New York apartment. James felt it provided an appropriate ending to the exhibition experience. While Ono has some connections to Chicago, including her first permanent artwork in America, the "Sky Landing" sculpture in Jackson Park, and her song "Walking on Thin Ice," which was partly inspired by visiting Chicago and seeing Lake Michigan, her presence in the city has been relatively muted until now.
Bringing such a comprehensive exhibition to Chicago represents both a significant responsibility and a natural fit for the Museum of Contemporary Art, according to James. "This institution, its foundations were built on performance," she explained. "We were a very early supporter of artists working in conceptualism and performance art. There were Fluxus-related events at the MCA, Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles had early interactions with the MCA. So this show is very much aligned with our history as an institution and our deep support of major art historical figures. Chicago is a town that has many, many creative artists working here — so it just feels at home here."
