The article reviews "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind" at The Broad in Los Angeles, the artist's first solo museum exhibition in Southern California, running through October 11. It highlights Ono's 1971 MoMA intervention where she released flies and invited the public to follow them, turning their reactions into the artwork itself. The exhibition surveys Ono's early work across conceptual art, music, film, installation, instruction pieces, and activism, including her childhood experience of imagining meals during wartime as a foundational artistic act.
This exhibition matters because it arrives amid a cultural reframing of Ono's legacy, positioning her as a foundational figure of conceptual and performance art rather than a cultural footnote or "the woman who broke up The Beatles." The show underscores Ono's relentless optimism and belief in imagination as the core of artistic practice, challenging decades of public dismissal and affirming her status as one of the defining artistic visionaries of the last century.