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Yoko Ono's Wish Tree installation in the Broad's grove of olive trees
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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.
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| Installation view of Yoko Ono's Lighting Piece, 1955 |
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| 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.
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| Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail (1962) in Grapefruit |
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| 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."
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| 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.
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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. |
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| Yoko Ono, Bag Piece, 1964 |
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| Yoko Ono, White Chess Set, 1966 |
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| 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.
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Installation view of Yoko Ono's Add Colour (Refugee Boat), 1960/2016
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Comments
Pre-Raphaelite artists had technical finesse down to a "T" but their creative style was way too reminiscent of Elvis-on-velvet.
As for creative types (Yoko Ono - including her music - or otherwise), Paris over 80 years ago was the hub of the visual arts, NYC more recently.
Meanwhile, the Jerry Perenchio collection perhaps is symbolic of France, while Yoko Ono is perhaps symbolic of LA (Groundhog-day-type comments or not).
craigfleharty, Instagram:
Went back a second time to the newly opened Geffen Galleries at LACMA. On second viewing, still loving the space. But the purpose of the space, the art, is not deeply resonating with me. There are moments, yes, but for 725 million dollars, one might expect more than moments. Will stay open minded and return for a third visit. Hoping it's a me not you problem. [End quote]
That Instagram comment is why I can easily see a percentage of visitors to LA's major public art museum giving it, at best, back-handed compliments or being polite instead of candid. A lack of enough skill and professionalism will strike various people as just the opposite of the special Raphael exhibit at the Met or the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.
I notice some of the metal clasps of objects on tables in the Geffen at least are color-matched to a vase or urn, while a larger work like the John Deare marble from the 1770s has black-metal wall clamps.
The black-metal support rods holding up the Pedro Reyes sculpture would be more "Jerry Perenchio" versus "Yoko Ono" if they were matched to the color of the artwork and concrete wall.
https://lamag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/IMG_1779-1200x900.jpeg
If LACMA's staffers were more professional, such oversights wouldn't exist.
We is rubes. Oh, well.
--- J. Garcin
In LACMA’s previous incarnation, a gallery titled Art of the Pacific…was enlivened – somewhat incongruously – with plinths and wall treatments by Austrian artist Franz West. Otherwise, modern art…confidently took centre stage, with European painting and sculpture housed on the floor above, then Islamic Art, South and South East Asian art, American applied arts, Korean art and Art of the Ancient World pushed into unloved sections of the building that most visitors rarely had time to see when temporary exhibitions demanded our attention
Ever since Govan unveiled the plans for the museum, critics have sniped at the building’s design, its budget overruns, its aesthetic compromises, its suitability for Los Angeles and, especially, its vaunted new approach to hanging its collection. At this point, they seem at best uncharitable and at worst totally misguided.
The Geffen’s best trick…is to structure the displays…around four bodies of water: the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea… It is hard to identify where one section ends and another begins; they drift and mingle together. And, crucially, encyclopaedic completeness becomes less of an issue.
Early critics of the Geffen Galleries groused that the new building was marginally smaller than those it replaced. There is no doubt, now it’s done, that it will offer better access to the collection, even if it displays fewer objects. The installation brings together textiles with paintings, ceramics with sculpture, applied arts with photography.
The raw concrete walls of Zumthor’s galleries grant such objects an undeniable visual drama, and pieces are installed on elegant dark wooden tables and in cases instead of white plinths. (No ugly stanchions anywhere!)
…among the contemporary artworks here there are too many instances of pieces chosen just because they resemble (or reproduce) traditional artefacts. This is not a criticism of the works themselves, merely my sense that contemporary art here is being co-opted by curators to tell particular stories. This is especially true with photography, of which there is a lot.
Another problem, which will doubtlessly recede as curators get over their excitement at their new home, is at the tendency of displays to play to the building. Though not overbearing, Zumthor’s edifice is such a major presence that certain artworks seem chosen to draw even more attention to it, as if that were necessary.
But museums are no longer primarily educational institutions and, to survive, they now must entertain as well. For the $30 full-price entry fee, visitors will expect (and should get) at least a bit of a thrill from this new cultural experience. The global museum, in the third decade of this century, is still figuring out what it should be. In Los Angeles, it will soon have to compete with George Lucas’s headline-grabbing new museum, as well as existing theme parks, sports stadiums and the beach.
To stay relevant, art museums must meet people where they are, and then carry them a bit further. The Geffen Galleries achieve this with a sense of gravitas and permanence that is all too rare in this fast-changing, still-young city. [End quote]
But also, even more importantly, all the wall and floor space throughout the Geffen that gives the impression the museum doesn't have enough artworks to slot into it, is a big weakness (at least to me).
I also originally didn't care for contemporary art being not just in BCAM, often the Resnick, but also particularly in the Geffen. I now just want Govan and his staffers to fill up all its blank or empty spaces. If that even requires works otherwise shown annually at the LA Art Show, so be it.
Govan, I give up. You won. lol.
I'm also never sure when I may (or may not) be experiencing the phenomenon of the Emperor's New Clothes, which goes double for the Yoko Ono exhibit at the Broad.
Moreover, people's minds (and eyeballs) are like the human fingerprint: No two are alike.
The Met has a temp show on Raphael, while at LACMA, in its special exhibitions gallery, way too much space (still) is turned over to hanging objects that riff on the Metropolitan Opera House's chandeliers.
Yoko Ono resides in New York, while Marcel Duchamp was an immigrant based in NYC.
Between the two of them, Duchamp makes for a better show. It's to Ono what Raphael is to Josiah McElheny. But it would have admittedly cost the Broad a lot more to organize a Duchamp than an Ono. In general, I believe their special exhibition schedule has also become less ambitious, but they are spending bucks on expanding their building.
As for Raphael, he lived in Rome while McElheny is in NYC.
Since museums in LA need to import objects from throughout the world for various special shows, too bad they can't be better. But, okay, that pushes up the budget. But people like Michael Govan or Joanne Heyler (or at the Hammer, MOCA) really may be satisfied showing artworks otherwise exhibited mainly at the annual LA Art Show or Basel in Miami.
And even if the Getty has a large budget, it still relies on outside funders for certain acquisitions. So institutions do things based on both money but also other things. Oh, well.