Credits: Far Out / Photograph © Clay Perry / Artwork © Yoko Ono
Music of the Mind, an extensive art exhibition featuring more than 200 pieces by Yoko Ono, will be held in Chicago later this year.
The exhibition will open at the Museum of Contemporary Art in October 2025. It will feature displays of photography, films, music, a music room, installations, and other pieces spanning several decades.
One of these is her revered 1964 work Cut Piece, which saw her sit silently while audience members cut away pieces of her clothing as a statement about violence against women. Her book Grapefruit will also be at the exhibition, alongside music collaborations with John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and her husband, John Lennon.
Wish Tree, which Ono has been working on since the 1960s and requires audiences to plant a wish on a tree, will also be there, alongside films Fly and Bottoms.
The exhibition was previously held at London’s Tate Museum with immense success. More than just celebrating Ono’s achievements, the exhibition initially sought to communicate broader issues about the world and contemporary society in small but impactful ways.
As Juliet Bingham, Curator of International Art at Tate, explained to Artists Responding To, Ono’s exhibition explores “conceptual practice” that “foregrounds ideas over objects, alongside her ongoing campaign for world peace.”
Bingham also said that it showcases her “radical” approach to “art, language, and participation”, acting as a “call to action” to change the world, “one wish at a time”. With demand high at the Tate, there is no doubt its arrival in America will be met with the same enthusiasm.
In a review, Far Out praised the exhibition’s extensive walk through Ono’s career, saying: “Balancing joy and seriousness in equal measure, from the giggles that echo through the rooms as strangers play with her interactive exhibits from the quiet that falls over the room as her Cut Piece film plays, the Tate approaches Ono’s career with exactly the spirit it deserves.”
The review continued, “Cutting through the noise of misconceptions or tired reductions, they position Ono as the exciting artist she is and always has been and as a vital teacher to so many other artists rather than just a muse to one.”
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