Thoughts on the recent and excellent Yoko Ono “Music of the Mind” exhibit at Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which I visited with my brother Dave back on Christmas Eve.
I’ve always been a massive Beatles fan, but I never understood the Yoko hate, it seemed dismissive and extreme. The fabs were always moving on to other things and John found someone he could move forward with, as an artist and person. Love matters. Beyond all that, Yoko was already an artist in her own right, before they met, working on her own and with heavyweights like John Cage and Ornette Coleman, among others. Although she went on to greater fame with Lennon; her art took a different turn, as well, which you can see in “Music of the Mind.”
A few years back my son Jude and I took in a John and Yoko exhibit at the Museum of Liverpool, which went back and forth between them over the 70s, and one could clearly see each person’s thoughts and work informed the other’s. On the other hand, “Music of the Mind,” was mostly Yoko and included many of her most well-known pieces, the films, the hammer and nail, the acorns for peace, etc. It also showed, imo, how her work as “performance artist” was as much about interaction and playfulness, as it was serious statements.
First thing in the exhibit was a series of wish trees, where folks were invited to write down a wish, put it on the tree, and to “keep wishing.” Simple, yes, and of course, the responses were interesting and mostly positive. I was reminded when my son Jude was little and we’d hand him a dandelion and tell him to blow the seeds into the wind and wish. When he was done, he would always jump for joy and say “more wishes, more wishes.” Indeed. Beside the wish tree, there was a wall of post its where folks were invited to write something about their mother and add it to the collection – and they weren’t all warm and fuzzy, some were brutally complicated and honest. One could pound in a nail (as John once did) or shake hands (me pictured here). There were the white chess boards and the pieces of broken china to reassemble. Folks were engaged; you could tell that people came to the exhibit with an open mind.
At the end, in a very timely piece, there was a piece called “Add Colour (Refugee Boat),” completed for this exhibit in 2025, an all-white boat in an all-white room, with folks invited to contribute one’s hopes and beliefs in blue and white. The room was filled with thoughts from visitors, and of course, new visitors would come in and read what other people had to say, which of course, is part of the point.
Doug Hoekstra 