NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. – An exhibition of conceptual art by Yoko Ono will open Sept. 1 at Westminster College’s Foster Gallery, and run through Oct. 24.
Titled “Yoko Ono: Passages and Wishes,” it was curated by Kevin Concannon, an Ono scholar and professor emeritus at Virginia Tech; and John Noga of Youngstown. Admission is free and open to the public.
The exhibition is described as a personal and participatory experience that bears a message of peace, imagination and action.
It was distilled from an earlier exhibition, “Yoko Ono Imagine Peace: Featuring John and Yoko’s Year of Peace,” which debuted at the University of Akron in 2007 and was curated by Concannon, who was a professor there at the time.
That exhibition focused on John Lennon’s and Yoko Ono’s efforts to promote world peace in 1969. Lennon and Ono were married that year. Lennon was killed in 1980.
Over the past 18 years, the exhibition has traveled to 12 venues, with each presentation reconfigured to fit the space of the host institution – including Westminster College.
This approach has allowed the exhibit “to remain both flexible and impactful,” Noga said, “sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting, yet always staying true to Ono’s call for peace, imagination and collective action.”
Ono “enthusiastically” supported the exhibition throughout its many years of travel, embracing each venue as a channel for sharing her message of peace and activism, Noga said.
At first, Concannon and Noga had no plans to tour the “Passages and Wishes” exhibit.
But, “the power of the work and its resonance with audiences led to invitations from institutions across the country,” Noga said.
He and Concannon, whom Noga described as a mentor and friend, had earlier collaborated on the “Agency: Art and Advertising” exhibition, which was on view at the McDonough Museum of Art in Youngstown in 2008, when Noga was employed there.
A central feature of the Ono exhibition is the interactive, instructional work “Wish Tree,” in which visitors are encouraged to write their personal wishes for peace on tags and hang them from the tree. At the close of the exhibition, these tags will be given to the artist and will continue on in connection with Ono’s “Imagine Peace Tower” project in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Like “Wish Tree,” the other components of the exhibition at Westminster will encourage reflection and participation.
The short film “Passages for Light,” which highlights “Imagine Peace Tower,” will be screened continuously at Foster Gallery during the exhibit’s run.
For over 70 years, Ono has been a visionary in conceptual and performance art. Emerging in the 1950s and gaining international recognition in the 1960s, she has continuously challenged artistic conventions.
Ono has worked in multiple media, including performance, poetry, sculpture, installation, writing, film, music and activism.
The Foster Art Gallery, under the direction of Summer Zickefoose, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located in Patterson Hall, adjacent to Orr Auditorium.
Concannon will deliver a free public lecture at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 4, in the Witherspoon Maple room, on the third floor of McKelvey Campus Center. A gallery reception will follow from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at which guests can engage with Concannon, who is an expert on Ono’s work.
Pictured at top: “Wish Tree,” which is part of the Yoko Ono exhibit coming to Westminster College.