Yoko Ono is bringing her message of peace to Los Angeles as part of her upcoming exhibition at the Broad museum. <\/p>\n
Nearly 57 years after she and her husband John Lennon erected a billboard near the Chateau Marmont emblazoned with the words, \u201cWAR IS OVER! If You Want It,\u201d the 93-year-old artist will place a series of seven digital billboards across the city, with five along Sunset Strip in West Hollywood and one each at the TCL Chinese Theatre and Fox Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. <\/p>\n
The billboards, which read, \u201cTHINK PEACE,\u201d \u201cACT PEACE,\u201d \u201cSPREAD PEACE,\u201d \u201cIMAGINE PEACE,\u201d and \u201cPEACE is POWER,\u201d are part of a host of ancillary programming announced Thursday by the museum in conjunction with the new show, \u201cYoko Ono: Music of the Mind,\u201d opening May 23.<\/p>\n
Also on the schedule: the re-creation of two of Ono\u2019s groundbreaking performance art works, including 1964\u2019s iconic \u201cCut Piece,\u201d which Ono originally performed in Kyoto and Tokyo, before staging its American debut at Carnegie Hall. During that show, Ono sat silently onstage while members of the audience slowly snipped away pieces of her clothes. \u201cCut Piece\u201d will be revived this summer by performance and visual artist MPA at REDCAT. In another performance, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra will endeavor to capture the essence of \u201cSky Piece to Jesus Christ\u201d (1965), which saw Ono wrap an ensemble in gauze until they could no longer play their instruments.<\/p>\n
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\u201cCut Piece,\u201d 1964, performed in \u2018New Works of Yoko Ono,\u2019 Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, filmed by David and Albert Maysles, film, 16mm, black and white, and sound (stereo), 8min, 27sec. <\/p>\n
(\u00a9 Yoko Ono)<\/p>\n
In August, the museum\u2019s summer concert series will return, highlighted by \u201cYoko Only\u201d; a night celebrating Ono\u2019s extensive music catalog. The event will be guest-curated by Yuka Honda, who co-founded the Japanese American band Cibo Matto with Miho Hatori. At the top of the bill are Yo La Tengo and Nels Cline, guitarist for Wilco and Honda\u2019s husband. Other musicians include Ono\u2019s granddaughter, Emi Helfrich, Theo Bleckmann, Finom, Maggie Parkins, Patrick Shiroishi, Sleater-Kinney, Sylvan Esso, Tune-Yards and Rufus Wainwright.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the \u201960s, [Ono] has engaged mass media as a platform for her work, and used the language of advertising in her work to spread her message,\u201d says Sarah Loyer, curator and exhibitions manager at the Broad.<\/p>\n
Loyer has a history of curating work featuring politically driven narratives. She previously spearheaded three celebrated exhibitions, \u201cKeith Haring: Art Is for Everybody\u201d in 2023, \u201cThis Is Not America\u2019s Flag\u201d one year prior, and 2019\u2019s \u201cSoul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963\u20131983.\u201d The latter, similar to the Ono exhibition, arrived after showing at Tate Modern in London.<\/p>\n
\u201cOno\u2019s work\u2026 often takes on a political position,\u201d Loyer explains. \u201cIt\u2019s almost always a humanitarian message. It\u2019s a huge piece of her work \u2014 an emphasis that she\u2019s had for her whole career.\u201d<\/p>\n
The original 1969 \u201cWAR IS OVER! If You Want It\u201d L.A. billboard, which also appeared in Times Square and was printed in the New York Times, was not well documented, Loyer notes. <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778758153_587_.jpeg\")
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A billboard promoting peace designed by Yoko Ono and John Lennon towers over Sunset Blvd. in 1969. <\/p>\n
(Photograph David Schoonover \/ Artwork Yoko Ono \/ Lennon)<\/p>\n
\u201dBut we found the photographer and got the rights to it, and we\u2019re blowing it up; it\u2019ll be a huge graphic in the galleries,\u201d she says. The additional billboard phrases echo those coined during Ono and Lennon\u2019s creation of the conceptual country of \u201cNutopia,\u201d which championed peace, love and unity. <\/p>\n
That campaign ran in protest of the Vietnam War, but Ono continued to push its core message. And although the current exhibition\u2019s presentation may be timely, it was in development long before today\u2019s ongoing conflicts. \u201cThe marker of a great artist\u2019s work is that it continues to feel relevant,\u201d Loyer says.<\/p>\n
Ono\u2019s practice rests on giving agency to the audience, Loyer notes. \u201cIt\u2019s really about placing trust in all of us to effect change in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Yoko](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778758154_699_.jpeg\")
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Yoko Ono at one of her early exhibitions.<\/p>\n
(Mirrorpix \/ Mirrorpix via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The exhibition\u2019s guest curator, Honda, first encountered Ono right after she moved to New York City, and before she started her band. While strolling through Central Park in 1987, Honda spotted the artist wandering with no guards and an elderly woman by her side.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so peaceful; it was a different Yoko than I knew from the media,\u201d she recalled. \u201cShe had this really warm air, and I waved to her, and she waved back to me. I felt very excited, like I witnessed something magical, and it stayed with me for a long time, but I didn\u2019t know that I would end up meeting her.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wouldn\u2019t be until the mid-\u201990s that the two crossed paths again, when Cibo Matto remixed \u201cTalking to the Universe,\u201d and Ono invited the duo to lunch. During the meal, she asked Honda to rehearse with her and her son, Sean Lennon, before they performed at a concert memorializing the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Backstage, she and Sean \u201chit it off immediately,\u201d spawning a blossoming creative relationship that has held up since.<\/p>\n
Honda has since spent a lot of time with Ono, who exposed her to her personal world of visual art and music. Conversations between the two often brimmed with lessons on life, which Honda carries close to heart.<\/p>\n
![\"Yuka](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778758154_376_.jpeg\")
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Yuka Honda is a friend of collaborator of Yoko Ono and the guest curator of Ono\u2019s upcoming exhibit at the Broad.<\/p>\n
(Sean Ono Lennon)<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has told me eye-opening ideas that actually stayed with me forever, \u201d Honda recalls. \u201cThe biggest thing that she taught me is about the difficulty of life, which she has experienced a lot of \u2014 her husband was murdered in front of her, and her daughter was kidnapped for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer life is filled with difficult moments. So, she has come up with this idea to view this difficulty as a blessing\u2026 It\u2019s happening to teach you something, because by going through it, you grow, you learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it came to selecting artists to comprise a quasi-supergroup for \u201cYoko Only,\u201d Honda turned to close friends and those inspired by Ono.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most intriguing part of Honda\u2019s guest curation is \u201cI Am Yoko,\u201d described as an \u201cin-progress multimedia musical\u201d being made in collaboration with L.A.-based artist Glenn Kaino. <\/p>\n
Honda says the idea for the musical came about after she observed that the world sometimes perceived Ono as \u201cforeign\u201d and \u201calien.\u201d Honda wanted to bring her back down to Earth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many things that we connect to her, even though she is \u2014 at the same time \u2014 an extraordinary, totally genius artist, who turned a lot of her hard rock inside of her heart into a beautiful flower, a beautiful cloud, and she admitted them to the world,\u201d Honda explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a process that she took in order to do so, and I really wanted to talk about that. I also wanted people to feel her life from inside of her; experience it.\u201d<\/p>\n