Posted on Friday, August 22, 2025
“Yoko Ono: Passages and Wishes” will be on view at Westminster College’s Foster Art Gallery from Sept. 1 to Oct. 24. Curated by Kevin Concannon and John Noga, the exhibition invites visitors into a deeply personal and participatory experience with Ono’s powerful message of peace, imagination and action.
Concannon, Yoko Ono scholar and professor emeritus at Virginia Tech, will deliver a free public lecture at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 4, in the Witherspoon Maple Room in McKelvey Campus Center. A gallery reception in the Foster Art Gallery will follow from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. This event offers a unique opportunity to engage directly with one of the leading experts on Ono’s work.
A central feature of the exhibition is the interactive, instructional work WISH TREE, where 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 wishes will be returned to the artist and continue on in connection with Ono’s work, IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In addition to the WISH TREE, the other components of the exhibition inspire and encourage reflection, participation and a renewed sense of purpose. A short film, “Passages for Light,” will be screened continuously in the gallery, highlighting Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE TOWER project. Visitors are also welcome to leave the gallery with IT’S TIME FOR ACTION / ACTION IS PEACE posters to further share Ono’s ongoing call for peace.
For over 70 years, Ono has been a visionary force in conceptual and performance art. Emerging in the 1950s and gaining international recognition in the 1960s, she has continuously challenged artistic conventions. Working across performance, poetry, sculpture, installation, writing, film, music and activism, Ono merges art and life into a powerful call for peace, participation and change. Her work invites viewers to imagine new possibilities—and to become part of the creative process themselves.
The exhibition is free and open to the public.
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.
For more information, please email Zickefoose at zickefse@westminster.edu.
ABOVE IMAGE:
Yoko Ono
"Wish Tree for Stockholm," 1996/2012
Installation view from "Yoko Ono: Grapefruit," Moderna
Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2012
Photo credit: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet-Stockholm
