Yoko Ono Retrospective Exhibition Opens In Denmark

Yoko Ono turned 80 earlier this year and to celebrate, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, has opened a retrospective covering more than half a century of her work.

Yoko Ono Half-A-Wind” looks back at Yoko Ono’s influence on avant garde art and how her personal expression has changed over the decades, using various media such as installation pieces, poetry, music and film.

Much of her work is interactive. One of her most famous installation pieces, “En Trance,” is included in the exhibition. This architectural construction can be entered six different ways depending on the viewer, allowing for various experiences. There’s also a new installation, “Moving Mountains,” in which visitors are encouraged to create mobile sculptures from cloth bags.

This isn’t the only new work Yoko Ono has created for this exhibition. A series of billboards have been set up around Copenhagen with words such as “DREAM,” “TOUCH,” “IMAGINE” and “BREATHE” to encourage commuters to take time out of their busy urban schedules. She’s also distributed free postcards bearing her art in Copenhagen’s cinemas, restaurants and cafes.

“Yoko Ono Half-A-Wind” runs until September 29.

Amsterdam Hilton celebrates John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton,
Talking in our beds for a week.
The newspaper said, “Say what you doing in bed?”
I said, “We’re only trying to get us some peace”.

Christ you know it ain’t easy…

– The Beatles, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”

That’s one of my favorite Beatles songs, and both John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped to make the Amsterdam Hilton one of the world’s most famous hotels, if at least for rock ‘n roll fans, when they picked the spot to camp out in bed for seven days during their honeymoon in 1969.

Right now, the hotel is in the middle of a special exhibition celebrating the famous couple and their “Bed-in for Peace,” during which they gave interviews, from bed, to scores of international journalists and furthered the anti-Vietnam movement that was really getting going in ’69.

There are photo exhibits, music and literary events planned through March 29 at the Amsterdam Hilton.

If you’re in town, go check it out.