The critically acclaimed Yoko Ono retrospective that generated massive crowds at Tate Fashionable final 12 months will open in October on the Museum of Modern Artwork (MCA) Chicago, its solely presentation within the US. The present, Yoko Ono: Music of the Thoughts, spans 70 years of Ono’s profession from her early Fluxus items and conceptual works to newer participatory installations, bringing collectively greater than 200 objects.
“Yoko Ono is a wildly influential and vital determine in efficiency, conceptualism, music and activism,” Jamillah James, the MCA’s senior curator and organiser of the museum’s presentation of Music of the Thoughts, stated in a press release. “She has impressed generations of audiences to suppose in a different way in regards to the on a regular basis and seeing artwork.” (The exhibition was curated by Juliet Bingham and Patrizia Dander at Tate Fashionable, which organised the present in collaboration with Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf.)
Whereas the Japanese-born artist has been a New Yorker since 1956, the MCA’s ties to the Fluxus motion—wherein Ono was a key determine—from the second of its founding make the Chicago museum an apt venue for her retrospective. In reality, simply two years after it opened, the museum hosted a efficiency by Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik wherein they re-created items by Ono and different Fluxus artists. (Chicago can also be residence to Ono’s first everlasting public artwork piece within the Americas, Sky Touchdown, put in in Jackson Park on the town’s South Aspect in 2016.)
Yoko Ono, Secret Piece, printed in Grapefruit, 1964. Typewritten card with ink additions © Yoko Ono
“There are numerous issues that folks simply don’t learn about Yoko Ono as a result of she solely occupies a sure portion of the general public imaginary, and it’s not as deep as her contributions,” says Joey Orr, the MCA’s deputy director and chief of curatorial affairs.
Fittingly, then, the museum’s presentation will embody three main programmes of performances and public occasions, the primary in the course of the present’s opening weekend in October, “which we envision as being a type of full museum music competition takeover”, Orr says, “and that is very a lot primarily based on Ono’s 2001 idea album Blueprint for a Dawn”. That occasion will embody modern renditions of Ono’s music and her score-based actions, in addition to invited artists performing their very own works, all through the museum.
Yoko Ono, Lower Piece, 1964. Efficiency view, New Works by Yoko Ono, Carnegie Recital Corridor, New York, NY, March 21, 1965 Picture © Minoru Niizuma
Across the midpoint of the exhibition, a programme of performances hosted at a music venue within the metropolis and a panel on the MCA will spotlight Ono’s affect on the music world, “which is one thing that’s lesser identified about her and we wish to give it a showcase”, Orr says. Across the time of the exhibition’s closing—which is able to practically coincide with Ono’s 93rd birthday in February 2026—the museum will host a night of performances of a few of Ono’s best-known works.
Orr provides: “We wish to guarantee that it’s not an exhibition that simply sits within the MCA like on a shelf, however that it’s one thing that really prompts the constructing and our communities within the spirit of the MCA and within the spirit of Ono’s personal inventive commitments.”
