Yoko Ono at the Broad

Yoko Ono's Wish Tree installation in the Broad's grove of olive trees

The Broad's "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind" revives a 2024 exhibition at Tate Modern. It's a big show covering a big career, with over 200 works spanning seven decades. For much of that time Ono was among the most famous of contemporary artists, less for her art than for her marriage to John Lennon, her anti-war and Feminist politics, and her tragic widowhood. Despite a résumé blending art, celebrity, and the Pacific Rim, this is Ono's first solo museum show in Southern California.

Installation view of Yoko Ono's Lighting Piece, 1955

Yoko Ono, Grapefruit (details), 1964

Ono first came to attention with typewritten instructions for "paintings" (which might more accurately be described as performances). A 1964 artist's book, Grapefruit, collected instructions devised from 1953 onward. Ono did not invent typewritten conceptualism, but her example was globally influential, not in the least in Los Angeles and its emerging art schools. 

Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail (1962) in Grapefruit

Broad installation view of a 1965 David and Albert Maysles video documenting Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964) in Carnegie Hall, New York

There's a lot of text in the first few galleries. Then the show abruptly turns retinal, aural, and interactive. Ono's critical legacy rests in no small part with Cut Piece, a 1964 performance that debuted in Kyoto. The artist sat impassively as audience members were invited to take scissors and snip off parts of her clothing. Above is a still from video documentation (by David and Albert Maysles) of Ono's 1965 Carnegie Hall performance. 

Cut Piece is now read in Feminist terms, as a manifesto on the abjection of women. For what it's worth, this does not get much explicit support from Ono's statements at the time. She is quoted: "It was a kind of criticism against artists who are always giving what they want to give. I wanted people to take whatever they wanted."

Installation view of Yoko Ono's Apple, 1966

Maurizio Cattelan's 2019 Comedian (the duct-taped banana) is not too different from Ono's 1966 Apple, each playing on the irony of perishable produce as marketable art. Ono offered Apple for £200, promising "the excitement of watching the apple decay." A Cattelan banana went for $6.24 million in 2024. 

Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail, 1961/1966

Ono was also ahead of the curve in audience-participation art. The sound of Painting to Hammer a Nail echos through the Broad's ground floor. 

Yoko Ono, Bag Piece, 1964

Yoko Ono, White Chess Set, 1966

Yoko Ono, Ceiling Painting, 1966

In Ceiling Painting's original realization, London gallery visitors were allowed to climb the stepladder and use a suspended magnifying glass to examine a painting on the ceiling. The painting contained the barely visible word YES. This work was the meet-cute for Ono and John Lennon. But at the Broad, the ladder is on a platform, off-limits to visitors. 

Ono's 1969 marriage to Lennon was her third (and Lennon's second), The couple's musical collaboration, the Plastic Ono Band, was dismissed by many rock critics and by some followers of Ono's art. The Tate/Broad exhibition argues for the significance of this phase of Ono's career. A listening station with album art and ephemera documents a through line from John Cage to Lennon's late-Beatles studio experimentation to the Plastic Ono Band and beyond. Lennon may have been the first to use the term "supergroup," describing the POB's kaleidoscopic roster. That included Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, Phil Spector (as producer), Frank Zappa, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison—every Beatle except McCartney. Ono and Lennon told took the inclusivity further, insisting "You are the Plastic Ono Band."

"Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind" makes a case for a multimedia conceptualist who is both overexposed and underappreciated. It's at the Broad through Oct. 11, 2026.

Installation view of Yoko Ono's Add Colour (Refugee Boat), 1960/2016