awards for arts achievement
National Arts Awards | |
| Recipient: | Yoko Ono
Kitty Carlisle Hart Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts |
| Year: | 2008 |
Yoko Ono is a multimedia artist who constantly challenges the traditional boundaries of sculpture, painting, theater, and music. Since the late 1950s, her groundbreaking conceptual and performance work, experimental films, and music established her as an influential and major artist. Ms. Ono has had numerous international solo exhibitions and retrospectives, including major touring shows initiated by the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford and the Japan Society in New York.
In 1969, Yoko Ono and John Lennon performed Bed-in for Peace in Amsterdam, Montreal, and Toronto, and installed WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT billboards and posters in many countries. Beginning in 2001, international tensions again inspired her to install IMAGINE PEACE billboard and poster works in New York City and around the world, and her IMAGINE PEACE TOWER was unveiled in Reykjavik, Iceland, on October 9, 2007.
Ms. Ono first performed her legendary Cut Piece in Kyoto in 1964, in which she invited the audience to cut away her clothes, and during the following two years, performed it in Tokyo, New York City, and London. She performed the work again in Paris in 2003. Her one-woman show, Fenster fur Deutschland, at the Kunsthalle Bremen in 2007, was recognized the following year by the College Art Association with an award for Distinguished Body of Work. In 2002, Ms. Ono initiated the LennonOno Grant for Peace, which acknowledges actions of peace and truth.
In 2008, she performed and exhibited her work at the Bluecoat Art Centre in Liverpool, and had one-woman exhibitions in Sao Paolo; New York City; and at the Towada Art Center, Japan, where a permanent installation was also commissioned. Last month, Ms. Ono opened a major one-woman exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, which will travel to the Baltic Arts Centre in Gateshead, England. Installations of her work are currently on view in Pasadena, CA; Tokyo, Japan; Venice, Italy; and Warsaw, Poland. In 2009, Ms. Ono will participate in The Venice Biennale, the 53rd International Art Exhibition.