Curated by Alexandra Munroe with Jon Hendricks
Japan Society Gallery, New York, October 18, 2000–January 14, 2001
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, March 10-June 17, 2001
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, July 14–September 16, 2001
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, October 18, 2001–January 6, 2002
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, February 23–May 20, 2002
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June 22–September 8, 2002
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, October 25, 2002–January 26, 2003
Rodin Gallery, Seoul, June 21–September 14, 2003
Art Tower Mito, Japan, October 25, 2003–January 12, 2004
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, January 27–March 28, 2004
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, April 17–June 27, 2004
Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima, July 17–September 12, 2004
Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan, October 2–December 12, 2004
“As well as anyone, [Yoko Ono] encapsulated an evanescent and shifting moment in art. Fame distorts, and the new show helps set the record straight.”
—Michael Kimmelman, New York Times
YES Yoko Ono, the artist’s first major American retrospective, features approximately 150 works from 1960 to the present, with a focus on Ono’s early period, and includes objects and installations; language-based works such as instruction pieces and scores; film and video; music; and performance art. Offering a comprehensive reevaluation of her work, the exhibition explores Ono’s position within the postwar international avant-garde and her critical and influential role in originating forms of experimental art, music, film, and performance.
The critically acclaimed exhibition toured to 13 museums in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea from 2000 through 2004.
Winner: First Prize, Best Museum Show Originating in New York, awarded by the US chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA), 2001
"I believe in doing a work that grows by having people participate in it."
—Yoko Ono
"Yoko Ono’s art is a mirror-like her work A Box of Smile, we see ourselves in our reaction to it—a tiny prod toward personal enlightenment, very Zen."
—Michael Kimmelman, New York Times
YES Yoko Ono, the first American retrospective of the work of pioneering avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, offered a comprehensive reevaluation of her work. The exhibition explored Ono’s position within the postwar international avant-garde, and her critical and influential role in originating forms of contemporary art, music, film and performance. Featuring approximately 130 works from the 1960s to the present, it presented Ono as a key transmitter of Asian thought to the international art world, through her use of chance and minimalism, and her investigation of everyday life.
YES Yoko Ono was organized by Japan Society Gallery and curated by Alexandra Munroe, Director, Japan Society Gallery, in consultation with Fluxus scholar Jon Hendricks. Following its New York premiere, the exhibition traveled through 2004.
A fully illustrated 350-page catalogue, copublished by Japan Society and Harry N. Abrams, included essays by leading scholars from America, Europe and Japan, along with an extensive anthology of Ono’s writings and a CD of her new music.