SMB Museum : YOKO ONO: DREAM TOGETHER
YOKO ONO: DREAM TOGETHER
11.04.2025 to 14.09.2025
Neue Nationalgalerie
The exhibition is featuring works from across Ono’s groundbreaking career. The show will be presented on the occasion of her touring retrospective exhibition YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, on display at Berlin’s Gropius Bau from 11 April to 31 August 2025. At the same time, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) will be presenting the work TOUCH by Yoko Ono in their billboard series.
The exhibition invites viewers to move beyond passive observation and engage in active participation – both physically and mentally. Often beginning on an individual level, these actions evolve into broader collective efforts, demonstrating the transformative power of communal actions in working toward peace and imagining a different world. The works invite collective actions of repair, healing, cleaning, mending, wishing, imagining, and dreaming.
Interaction and Self-Reflection
Before entering the exhibition, visitors are invited to engage in a moment of self-reflection through Cleaning Piece (1996). Piles of local river stones are arranged, prompting visitors to reflect on their joys and sorrows. This is followed with instructions to fold paper cranes for peace, gradually filling the exhibition space. In Mend Piece (1966), visitors take part in an act of repair, piecing together broken ceramic cups and “mending with wisdom and love.” The exhibitions central installation, Play It By Trust (1966/1991), features a large chess table where up to 20 players can simultaneously engage in the nearly impossible act of playing with all white chess pieces, challenging them to “play as long as you remember where all your pieces are.”
War and Peace
In SKY / WATER (1999) viewers are invited to take a single piece from a sky puzzle, leading them to the other section of the exhibition that highlights works dedicated to the pursuit of peace. This includes the famous Bed-In for Peace in Amsterdam, documented in the film Mr. & Mrs Lennon’s Honeymoon (1969) and the ongoing newspaper ads that began with WAR IS OVER! If you want it (1969). Nearly a dozen original newspaper copies reflect the artists’ collective call for peace while also capturing the world’s state on those particular days. A distinct connection with Berlin is established through a photographic display of Ono and Lennon’s 1969 WAR IS OVER! If you want it intervention in West Berlin. Inside the gallery, Ono’s song Hiroshima Sky Is Always Blue (1995) plays, recorded to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. Ono, who was 12 years old at the time and living in Japan, was deeply affected by the experience – an event that profoundly influenced her life-long commitment to global peace.
Outside, in front of the iconic Mies van der Rohe designed building, a single Wish Tree (1996) stands, offering a connection to her concurrent exhibition at Gropius Bau.
Curators
YOKO ONO: DREAM TOGETHER is curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of Neue Nationalgalerie, Connor Monahan, and Jon Hendricks, Studio Yoko Ono.
The exhibition is made possible by Freunde der Nationalgalerie.
A special exhibition by the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin