The Broad landed an artistic coup with Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Southern California. Organized in collaboration with Tate Modern, London, this celebration of the visionary artist, musician and activist and her contemporary culture-shaping work over seven decades runs through October 11.

Yoko Ono is, of course, the widow of musician and former Beatle John Lennon, and though he IS present, the exhibition clearly shows the significant art Ono created before and after their time together. Comprehensive and thoughtfully curated, the show includes film, written word, canvases and a number of imaginative interactive pieces.

To wit, the olive trees on the plaza alongside the Broad are Wish Trees for Los Angeles, an installation first realized in 1996 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, where visitors are invited to tie their own wishes to branches in a living expression of hope. When I visited in late May, one tag read: “I wish the words of John and Yoko about peace and love would continue to echo around the world!”

Another installation I found very moving and timely is Helmets (Pieces of Sky) (2001), where gallery visitors are invited to take a puzzle piece from one of the overturned World War II-era German soldier helmets, suggesting that the pieces all come together to form one complete sky. In Ono’s words, “Take a piece of sky. Know that we are all part of each other.”

The most well-known of the video features shows Ono’s participatory work, Cut Piece, first performed in Kyoto in 1964. Ono sits silently onstage while audience members – who I noted do become increasingly aggressive – are invited to cut away pieces of her clothing. The Guardian observed this to be “such a classic of 60s art it is about as familiar to art students as the Beatles themselves.”

Ono’s international campaigns for peace and anti-war activism are also on view. Acorn Event (1968) began with Ono and Lennon planting two acorns as a living sculpture at Coventry Cathedral in England. They then sent acorns to world leaders, inviting them to plant them in their own gardens as symbols of world peace. Bed Peace (1969), shows the couple at their famous “bed-in” events in Amsterdam and Montreal – a play on the sit-in protests common during the Vietnam War era – leveraging media attention to speak out against the war. Their message of nonviolence resounded in their song “Give Peace A Chance” which became an international anthem and still resonates today. As does this exhibition.

For tickets and details, click here.