Yoko Ono's 200-work retrospective invites visitors inside her creative mind

At 92, Yoko Ono is having a moment museums can't ignore. "Music of the Mind," a sweeping retrospective now at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, gathers over 200 works spanning seven decades—from her provocative 1960s performances to large-scale installations created just recently. It's one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of her work ever assembled.

Ono wrote in 1966: "The only sound that exists to me is the sound of the mind. My works are only to induce music of the mind in people." That statement became the exhibition's north star. What makes this show different from a typical retrospective is that it doesn't just display Ono's work—it asks you to complete it.

Participatory Art That Breaks the Museum Rules

Walk through these galleries and you'll find permission to do things museums usually forbid. Hammer a nail into a white canvas. Climb inside a black cloth bag. Piece together broken ceramics. Play chess on a white board. These aren't gimmicks—they're central to how Ono has always worked. "Something that's central to Ono's work is that she gives permission," says Korina Hernandez, a curatorial assistant at the museum. "So here you have permission to really engage her creativity and engage with her work in a way that you usually can't in museums."

The exhibition traces Ono's path from Tokyo to New York, where she arrived at 18 to study poetry and composition at Sarah Lawrence College. By the 1960s, she was embedded in the city's experimental art scene, collaborating with John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and eventually John Lennon, whom she married in 1969. Their decade-long creative partnership—including the famous bed-ins for peace during the Vietnam War—made her internationally famous, but the exhibition makes clear that Ono's influence extends far beyond her relationship with Lennon.

The show includes her most iconic and controversial early works. Cut Piece (1964) invited audiences to cut away pieces of her clothing as she knelt on the ground. Fly (1970-71), a short film she directed and scored with Lennon, shows a housefly crawling across a woman's naked body. Film No. 4 (Bottoms) is an 80-minute film of exactly what its title suggests—presented in all its variety. The British Board of Film Censors gave it an X rating in 1967, which only amplified its reach.

More recent works show Ono's evolution without losing her core intent. My Mommy Is Beautiful (2004) asks visitors to write honest reflections about their mothers on notecards. Add Color (Refugee Boat) (1960/2016) invites people to write their hopes onto a white boat and surrounding walls. Peace—the theme that defined her bed-ins with Lennon—remains woven through pieces like Imagine Peace (2003) and Peace Is Power (2017).

Tatsu Aoki, a Chicago-based musician and filmmaker who has collaborated with Ono, tells Chicago magazine: "The exhibition will really open a lot of eyes, so people will realize how much Yoko Ono has done for the arts." After decades of being known primarily as Lennon's wife, this retrospective positions her where she belonged all along—at the center of her own story.

The exhibition runs through February 22, 2026 in Chicago, then travels to The Broad in Los Angeles from May 23 to October 11, 2026.