By Tequila Mockingbird
There was a time when playing Yoko Ono was an act of war. In my house, everyone listened to James Brown. The Godfather of Soul ruled the turntable. Funk was law. So when I first put on Plastic Ono Band and turned it up to ten, it was an act of treason—a teenage declaration of independence, volume as vengeance. I didn’t know it then, but I was tuning into something larger than rebellion. I was listening to a woman who turned sound into courage.
Now, decades later, Yoko Ono’s message is louder—and more needed—than ever. Her new exhibition, “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” opens May 23 at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles, running through October 11, 2026, and it’s not just an art show. It’s a call to conscience, a map back to empathy, and a mirror that reflects the urgency of peace in our time.
The Art of Participation
Yoko never wanted audiences to stand still. She wanted them to move, to act, to feel. Her early “instruction pieces” invited people to fly without leaving the ground, to listen to the sound of the Earth turning, to imagine peace as something tangible. That invitation remains at the heart of this new exhibit.
Visitors can tie wishes to her famous Wish Tree, wander through her conceptual installations, and even engage with the reconstructed Cut Piece—a work that turns vulnerability into shared humanity. It’s deeply personal and profoundly universal, reminding us that connection is an act of courage.
The Lennon Years and Beyond
Of course, the world still knows Yoko as the woman who stood beside John Lennon, whispering revolution through art and love. Together, they staged their Bed-In for Peace and planted acorns for the future. Those ideas—once dismissed as naive—now feel prophetic. As conflicts and crises ripple across the planet, her insistence that “peace is power” has never felt more vital.
Music of the Mind
“Music of the Mind” is less a retrospective and more a living experiment. Ono’s pieces breathe and evolve through interaction. The exhibit bridges her Fluxus beginnings with her multimedia activism, including archival footage, sound installations, and unseen personal artifacts. Every piece hums with the same subversive tenderness that made Plastic Ono Band both a scream and a prayer.
The Punk of Peace
When I cranked Yoko Ono to full blast as a kid, it wasn’t just noise—it was revelation. It was raw, unfiltered emotion cutting through family rules and musical dogma. In a house where James Brown laid down the law, Yoko was my jailbreak. And that’s what she still represents today: the art of refusal, the bravery of vulnerability, the rebellion of tenderness.
Half a century later, she’s still asking the world to listen—not with their ears, but with their hearts. And maybe that’s the purest form of punk there is.
So as the world teeters on edge once again, maybe the message hasn’t changed—it’s only grown louder. Give peace a chance. Not as nostalgia, not as a lyric—but as a daily act of defiance.
