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Yoko Ono Has Outlasted the Dismissals, the Caricatures and the Blame

Long dismissed as a footnote in John Lennon's career, Ono is now widely recognized as a pioneer of conceptual and performance art whose influence on the avant-garde stretches back to the early 1960s.

The key collaborator in any artwork is the viewer, a point foundational to Yoko Ono’s practice. We first encounter this notion just outside the door of The Broad in L.A., where “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” runs through Oct. 11. There, from the limbs of the century-old Barouni olive trees, hundreds of white tags hang like fruit. On them are written the wishes of passersby, completing her work, Wish Tree (1996), in which viewers are invited to draw inspiration from the messages or add their own to uplift others.

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“There are through lines from the very beginning where she’s asking us to look internally and find a sense of self, a sense of centeredness, and act from there with compassion towards others,” The Broad curator and exhibitions manager Sarah Loyer tells Observer of the show, which originated at the Tate Modern in 2024, noting that Ono sees the artist’s role as one of transforming consciousness.

Most famous in many circles for being John Lennon’s wife, Ono had a noteworthy career as an artist long before she met him. A fixture in New York’s avant-garde scene since the mid-1950s, her loft on Chambers Street was known for a series of concerts she curated with composer La Monte Young, attended by such luminaries as John Cage (with whom she toured Japan) and Isamu Noguchi. In 1961, her first major performance, at Carnegie Recital Hall, attended by Young, Richard Maxfield, Jonas Mekas, Yvonne Rainer and others, preceded her first solo art show, “Paintings & Drawings by Yoko Ono,” at AG Gallery owned by Fluxus guru George Maciunas, an early champion of her work.

Cut Piece (1964), first staged at........

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