title: Education

text: A great variety of pedagogical theories is discussed in the academic literature. Mental-discipline theories date back all the way to ancient Greek. They see education as a form of training to help the learner improve their intellectual capacities. They often start from a certain ideal of what educated people should be like and formulate their teaching methods accordingly. Naturalist theories assume that there is already an inborn natural tendency in children to develop in a certain way. The teaching process is then organized in such a manner as to ensure that these tendencies and potentials are fully actualized. Herbartianism divides the educational process into different phases and investigates how to best realize each phase. The initial phase consists of preparation before the actual teaching happens. During the teaching itself, new ideas are first presented to the learner and then associated to ideas with which the learner is already familiar. In later phases, the understanding shifts to a more general level behind the specific instances and the ideas are then put into concrete practice. According to the international consortium known as "the New London Group", there are four central components to pedagogy. In "situated practice", learning takes place by practically engaging in real-life situations. "Overt instruction" is closer to classical forms of teaching and aims at helping the learner construct new knowledge based on their experiences and pre-existing knowledge. In "critical framing", learners reflect on and critically analyze what they learned earlier. "Transformed practice" involves putting into practice what they learned previously, usually in new contexts and sometimes in the form of teaching others.


title: Education

text: Various learning theories are also discussed in pedagogy. They try to understand how learning happens and propose teaching methods according to these findings. According to apperception or association theories, the mind is initially a blank slate and learns about the world by forming associations between ideas and experiences. Education tries to ensure that the right associations are formed. Behaviorism understands learning as a form of conditioning. This happens by presenting the learner with a stimulus, associating this stimulus with the desired response, and solidifying this stimulus-response pair.


title: Education

text: There are many specific teaching methods available. Which one is most efficient in a particular case depends on various factors, like the subject matter as well as the learner's age and competence level. For this reason, students are often organized by age, competence, specialization, and native language into different classes and grades to ensure a productive learning process. Different subjects frequently use very different approaches: for example, methods focusing on verbal learning are common in language education while mathematical education is about abstract and symbolic thinking together with deductive reasoning. One central requirement for teaching methodologies is to make certain that the learner remains motivated, for example, because of interest and curiosity or through external rewards. Another component of many teaching methodologies is to include some form of test or assessment to ensure that the learner is making progress and to change the chosen method if necessary. An important pedagogical aspect in many forms of modern education is that each particular lesson is part of a larger educational enterprise governed by a syllabus, often covering several months or years. A further pedagogical factor concerns the instructional media used, such as books, worksheets, and audio-visual recordings as well as computer-assisted instruction.


title: Education

text: Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. The terms "educational psychology" and "school psychology" are often used interchangeably. Educational psychology is concerned with the processes of educational attainment in the general population and in sub-populations such as gifted children and those with specific disabilities.


title: Education

text: Educational psychology can in part be understood through its relationship with other disciplines. It is informed primarily by psychology, bearing a relationship to that discipline analogous to the relationship between medicine and biology. Educational psychology, in turn, informs a wide range of specialties within educational studies, including instructional design, educational technology, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education and classroom management. Educational psychology both draws from and contributes to cognitive science and the learning sciences. In universities, departments of educational psychology are usually housed within faculties of education, possibly accounting for the lack of representation of educational psychology content in introductory psychology textbooks (Lucas, Blazek, & Raley, 2006).


title: Education

text: Intelligence is an important factor in how the individual responds to education. Those who have higher scores of intelligence-metrics tend to perform better at school and go on to higher levels of education. This effect is also observable in the opposite direction, in that education increases measurable intelligence. Studies have shown that while educational attainment is important in predicting intelligence in later life, intelligence at 53 is more closely correlated to intelligence at 8 years old than to educational attainment.


title: Education

text: Education can also be a useful tool in personal development. This can include activities such as learning new skills, creating a personal development plan (PDP), developing talents, creating human capital, developing spiritually, or improving self-knowledge. Even the action of teaching others can help improve oneself.


title: Education

text: There has been much interest in learning modalities and styles over the last two decades. The most commonly employed learning modalities are:


title: Education

text: Other commonly employed modalities include musical, interpersonal, verbal, logical, and intrapersonal.


title: Education

text: Dunn and Dunn focused on identifying relevant stimuli that may influence learning and manipulating the school environment, at about the same time as Joseph Renzulli recommended varying teaching strategies. Howard Gardner identified a wide range of modalities in his Multiple Intelligences theories. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Keirsey Temperament Sorter, based on the works of Jung, focus on understanding how people's personality affects the way they interact personally, and how this affects the way individuals respond to each other within the learning environment. The work of David Kolb and Anthony Gregorc's Type Delineator follows a similar but more simplified approach.


title: Education

text: Some theories propose that all individuals benefit from a variety of learning modalities, while others suggest that individuals may have preferred learning styles, learning more easily through visual or kinesthetic experiences. A consequence of the latter theory is that effective teaching should present a variety of teaching methods which cover all three learning modalities so that different students have equal opportunities to learn in a way that is effective for them. Guy Claxton has questioned the extent that learning styles such as Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic(VAK) are helpful, particularly as they can have a tendency to label children and therefore restrict learning. Recent research has argued, "there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practice."


title: Education

text: Educational neuroscience is an emerging scientific field that brings together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, developmental cognitive neuroscience, educational psychology, educational technology, education theory and other related disciplines to explore the interactions between biological processes and education. Researchers in educational neuroscience investigate the neural mechanisms of reading, numerical cognition, attention, and their attendant difficulties including dyslexia, dyscalculia, and ADHD as they relate to education. Several academic institutions around the world are beginning to devote resources to the establishment of educational neuroscience research.


title: Education

text: As an academic field, philosophy of education is "the philosophical study of education and its problems its central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy". "The philosophy of education may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. That is, it may be part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the aims, forms, methods, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be metadisciplinary in the sense of being concerned with the concepts, aims, and methods of the discipline." As such, it is both part of the field of education and a field of applied philosophy, drawing from fields of metaphysics, epistemology, axiology and the philosophical approaches (speculative, prescriptive or analytic) to address questions in and about pedagogy, education policy, and curriculum, as well as the process of learning, to name a few. For example, it might study what constitutes upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of education as an academic discipline, and the relation between education theory and practice.


title: Education

text: There is no broad consensus as to what education's chief aim or aims are or should be. Different places, and at different times, have used educational systems for different purposes. The Prussian education system in the 19th century, for example, wanted to turn boys and girls into adults who would serve the state's political goals.


title: Education

text: Some authors stress its value to the individual, emphasizing its potential for positively influencing students' personal development, promoting autonomy, forming a cultural identity or establishing a career or occupation. Other authors emphasize education's contributions to societal purposes, including good citizenship, shaping students into productive members of society, thereby promoting society's general economic development, and preserving cultural values.


title: Education

text: The purpose of education in a given time and place affects who is taught, what is taught, and how the education system behaves. For example, in the 21st century, many countries treat education as a positional good. In this competitive approach, people want their own students to get a better education than other students. This approach can lead to unfair treatment of some students, especially those from disadvantaged or marginalized groups. For example, in this system, a city's school system may draw school district boundaries so that nearly all the students in one school are from low-income families, and that nearly all the students in the neighboring schools come from more affluent families, even though concentrating low-income students in one school results in worse educational achievement for the entire school system.


title: Education

text: In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses and their content offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for "race course", referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults. A curriculum is prescriptive and is based on a more general syllabus which merely specifies what topics must be understood and to what level to achieve a particular grade or standard.


title: Education

text: An academic discipline is a branch of knowledge which is formally taught, either at the university – or via some other such method. Each discipline usually has several sub-disciplines or branches, and distinguishing lines are often both arbitrary and ambiguous. Examples of broad areas of academic disciplines include the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences, humanities and applied sciences.


title: Education

text: Instruction is the facilitation of another's learning. Instructors in primary and secondary institutions are often called teachers, and they direct the education of students and might draw on many subjects like reading, writing, mathematics, science and history. Instructors in post-secondary institutions might be called teachers, instructors, or professors, depending on the type of institution; and they primarily teach only their specific discipline. Studies from the United States suggest that the quality of teachers is the single most important factor affecting student performance, and that countries which score highly on international tests have multiple policies in place to ensure that the teachers they employ are as effective as possible. With the passing of NCLB in the United States (No Child Left Behind), teachers must be highly qualified.


title: Education

text: It has been argued that high rates of education are essential for countries to be able to achieve high levels of economic growth. Empirical analyses tend to support the theoretical prediction that poor countries should grow faster than rich countries because they can adopt cutting-edge technologies already tried and tested by rich countries. However, technology transfer requires knowledgeable managers and engineers who are able to operate new machines or production practices borrowed from the leader in order to close the gap through imitation. Therefore, a country's ability to learn from the leader is a function of its stock of "human capital". Recent study of the determinants of aggregate economic growth have stressed the importance of fundamental economic institutions and the role of cognitive skills.


title: Education

text: At the level of the individual, there is a large literature, generally related to the work of Jacob Mincer, on how earnings are related to the schooling and other human capital. This work has motivated many studies, but is also controversial. The chief controversies revolve around how to interpret the impact of schooling. Some students who have indicated a high potential for learning, by testing with a high intelligence quotient, may not achieve their full academic potential, due to financial difficulties.


title: Education

text: Economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argued in 1976 that there was a fundamental conflict in American schooling between the egalitarian goal of democratic participation and the inequalities implied by the continued profitability of capitalist production.


title: Education

text: The world is changing at an ever quickening rate, which means that a lot of knowledge becomes obsolete and inaccurate more quickly. The emphasis is therefore shifting to teaching the skills of learning: to picking up new knowledge quickly and in as agile a way as possible. Finnish schools have begun to move away from the regular subject-focused curricula, introducing instead developments like phenomenon-based learning, where students study concepts like climate change instead. There are also active educational interventions to implement programs and paths specific to non-traditional students, such as first generation students.


title: Education

text: Education is also becoming a commodity no longer reserved for children; adults need it too. Some governmental bodies, like the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra in Finland, have proposed compulsory lifelong education.


title: Education

text: Studies found that automation is likely to eliminate nearly half the jobs in developed countries during roughly the next two decades. Automation is therefore considered to be a major factor in a "race between education and technology". Automation technologies and their application may render certain currently taught skills and knowledge redundant while increasing the need for other curricula – such as material related to the application of automation. It has been argued that formal education is "teaching workers the wrong things, and that deep reform is essential to facilitate the development of digital knowledge and technical skills, as well as nonroutine cognitive and noncognitive (or "soft") skills" and that the formal state-organized education system – which is built on the Industrial Revolution model and focuses on IQ and memorization is losing relevance. Schools were found to rarely teach in forms of "learning by doing", and many children above a certain age "hate school" in terms of the material and subjects being taught, with much of it being a "waste of time" that gets forgotten quickly and is useless in modern society. Moreover, the material currently being taught may not be taught in a highly time-efficient manner and analyzing educational issues over time and using relevant forms of student feedback in efficiency analysis were found to be important. Some research investigates how education can facilitate students' interest in topics – and jobs – that scientific research, data, economic players, financial markets, and other economic mechanisms consider important to contemporary and future human civilization and states.


title: Education

text: Research and data indicate future environmental conditions will be "far more dangerous than currently believed", with a review concluding that the current challenges that humanity faces are enormous. The effective resolval of such challenges may require novel lesson plans tailored towards skills and knowledge found to be both required and reasonable to be taught at the respective age with the respective methodology despite novel technological computation and information retrieval technologies such as smartphones, mathematical software and the World Wide Web. Environmental education is not widely taught extensively or facilitated while being potentially important to the protection and generation of – often unquantified – economic value such as clean air that agents of the economy can breathe. Education is often considered to be a national investment which may not always optimize for cost-efficiency while optimizing only in terms of contemporary economic value metrics or evaluations such as of finance and GDP without consideration of economic values or priorizations beyond these tools such as minimized marine pollution and maximized climate change mitigation. Researchers found that there is a growing disconnect between humans and nature and that schools "are not properly preparing students to become the scientists of tomorrow".<ref name="10.1126/science.aau3877"></ref> They also find that critical thought, social responsibility, health and safety are often neglected. According to UNESCO, "for a country to meet the basic needs of its people, the teaching of science is a strategic imperative".


title: Education

text: One example of a skill not commonly taught in formal education systems around the world but increasingly critical to both the individuals' lives and modern society at large is digital media literacy – the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of modern ICTs, with scientists calling for inclusion of it in curricula as well as for adult education.


title: Education

text: Studies have shown that active learning rarely applied in schools is highly efficacious. Studies found that massive open online courses offer a pathway to employment that currently bypasses conventional universities and their degree programs while often being more relevant to contemporary economic activities and the students' interests. Such online courses are not commonly part of formal education but are typically both completed and selected entirely on behalf of the student, sometimes with the support of peers over online forums. In contrast, blended learning merges online education with forms of face‐to‐face communication and traditional class-based education in classrooms, revealing itself to have the general capacity for increasingly relevant, resource-efficient and effective approaches to education. Deploying, using, and managing various tools or platforms for education typically imply an increase in economic investment. Expenses for education are often large with many calling for further increases. Potential policies for the development of international open source educational software using latest technologies may minimize costs, hardware requirements, problem-resolval efforts and deployment-times while increasing robustness, security and functional features of the software.


title: Education

text: Beginning in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education systems throughout the world, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries. Closures of schools and other learning spaces have impacted 94 percent of the world's student population, up to 99 percent in low and lower-middle income countries. Many schools made alternative plans during the pandemic, leading to a variety of in-person, hybrid, and online-only plans, which led to challenges for many students, teachers, and families including children with learning disabilities and those learning in a language that is not their native one. As of 30 September 2020 there were 27 countries that had localized school closures. In the United States, an estimated 55.1 million students were forced to cease in-person instruction as of 10 April 2020. A switch to a virtual learning experience is particularly challenging for families that cannot afford the proper technology, such as laptops, printers, or a reliable Internet connection. When schools close, parents are often asked to facilitate the learning of children at home and can struggle to perform this task. This is especially true for parents with limited education and resources. Students who require special education found it difficult to progress through the curriculum without tools and support that they require. Polling suggests that schools that serve a majority of students of color are far less likely to have access to the technology needed for remote learning. Only 66% of Black households in the U.S. had home broadband service in 2019. Only 45% of Black Americans owned a desktop or laptop computer in 2015. Without access to the internet or a computer, Black parents are at a disadvantage in educating their children. The mental health of students has been greatly impacted due to the pandemic. It is estimated that three in ten participating in school at home have had their emotional and mental health negatively impacted. Similarly, the social lives of students have also been upended and this has been detrimental to the health of students worldwide which has also negatively impacted educational quality. This will be an issue for years to come. COVID-19 has shone a light on opportunity gaps and it will be up to educators and policymakers to direct the necessary resources to mitigating them in the coming years.


title: James Gunn

text: James Francis Gunn Jr. (born August 5, 1966) is an American filmmaker, executive and actor. He began his career as a screenwriter in the mid-1990s, starting at Troma Entertainment with "Tromeo and Juliet" (1997). He then began working as a director, starting with the horror-comedy film "Slither" (2006), and moving to the superhero genre with "Super" (2010), "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017), "The Suicide Squad" (2021), and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023). In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery hired Gunn to become co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios.


title: James Gunn

text: He also wrote and directed the web series "James Gunn's PG Porn" (2008–2009), the HBO Max original series "Peacemaker" (2022–present), and the Disney+ original special "The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" (2022). Other projects he is known for is writing for the 2004 remake of George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" (1978), writing the live-action adaptation of "Scooby Doo" (2002), and its sequel "" (2004), writing and producing the horror-action film "The Belko Experiment" (2016), producing the superhero-horror film "Brightburn" (2019), and contributing to comedy-anthology film "Movie 43" (2013) (directing the segment "Beezel") and the 2012 hack-and-slash video game "Lollipop Chainsaw".


title: James Gunn

text: James Francis Gunn, Jr. was born on August 5, 1966 in St. Louis, Missouri, to parents James F. Gunn, an attorney, and Leota "Lee" (Hynek). He was raised between St. Louis and Manchester, Missouri. He has five siblings — actor Sean, actor and political writer Matt, screenwriter Brian, Patrick, and Beth. His father was from an Irish immigrant family. Gunn has stated that his family's surname was originally the Irish name MacGilgunn and that it means "sons to the servants of the god of the dead"; it actually means "son of the brown youth." Gunn was raised Catholic, despite being of partial Jewish descent.


title: James Gunn

text: Growing up, Gunn was influenced by low-budget films such as "Night of the Living Dead" and "Friday the 13th". He read magazines like "Fangoria" and attended genre movie screenings, including the original "Dawn of the Dead" at the Tivoli Theatre in St. Louis. At the age of 12, he began making 8 mm zombie films with his brothers in the woods near their home.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn and his brothers all attended the Jesuit St. Louis University High School, where he graduated in 1984. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Saint Louis University. While at Saint Louis University, Gunn created political cartoons for the school's student weekly, "The University News". Gunn said that, at an unspecified time in his college education, "I went to two years undergraduate film school at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. But I was pretty screwed up at the time, and had to leave. Years later I went to graduate school at the Columbia University School of Fine Arts but I studied prose writing, not film writing." He earned a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 1995.


title: James Gunn

text: While living in St. Louis, Gunn founded a band, The Icons, in 1989, serving as lead vocalist. The group released the album "Mom, We Like It Here on Earth" in 1994, and its songs "Sunday" and "Walking Naked" were featured in the film "Tromeo and Juliet". The Icons disbanded in the mid-1990s. Gunn has continued to work in music, composing songs for "Scooby-Doo", "", and "Movie 43".


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn began his career in filmmaking with Troma Entertainment in 1995, for which he wrote the independent film "Tromeo and Juliet". Working alongside his mentor Lloyd Kaufman, the co-founder of Troma, Gunn learned how to write screenplays, produce films, scout locations, direct actors, distribute films, and create his own poster art. After contributing to several other Troma films, Gunn in 2000 wrote, produced and performed in the superhero comedy "The Specials", directed by Craig Mazin and featuring Rob Lowe, Thomas Haden Church, Paget Brewster, Judy Greer and Jamie Kennedy.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn's first major Hollywood screenplay was "Scooby-Doo" in 2002. In 2004, he wrote the screenplays for the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" and the sequel "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed". With these films, Gunn became the first screenwriter to have two films top the box office in consecutive weeks. That same year, he executive produced and starred in the mockumentary "LolliLove", directed by and starring his then-wife Jenna Fischer. His film directorial debut was the 2006 horror-comedy "Slither", which was included on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the 50 Best Ever Reviewed Horror Movies.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn's next projects included the comedy short film "Humanzee!" which was originally intended exclusively for the Xbox Live's "Horror Meets Comedy" series of short comedy films by horror directors, it was replaced with "Sparky and Mikaela" which debuted on Xbox Live on December 31, 2008. In an April 2009 interview on "The Jace Hall Show", Gunn described "Sparky and Mikaela" as being "about a human [and] racoon crime fighting team and they fight crime in both the forest world, among the furry animals, and in the human world". Gunn also has a short-form web series for Spike.com titled "James Gunn's PG Porn".


title: James Gunn

text: In 2008, Gunn was a judge on the VH1 reality television show "Scream Queens", where 10 unknown actresses compete for a role in the film "Saw VI".


title: James Gunn

text: In 2009, Gunn announced he was going to write and direct "Pets", a comedy about a man who is abducted by aliens who want to turn him into a household pet, with Ben Stiller, Stuart Cornfeld and Jeremy Kramer producing. However, by March 2009, Gunn announced, ""Pets" unfortunately, is done. I'm gone. I left the project for various reasons. I hope it sees the light of day somehow, but it won't be with me attached as director."


title: James Gunn

text: In 2010, Gunn released "Super", a dark comedy and superhero satire starring Rainn Wilson and Elliot Page. He also directed a segment of the 2013 comedy anthology film "Movie 43" (2013); the segment starred Elizabeth Banks and Josh Duhamel. The film was critically panned.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn co-wrote and directed the Marvel Studios adaptation of "Guardians of the Galaxy", which was released on August 1, 2014. His brother, Sean, has a role in the film. Gunn has appeared as an actor, mostly in smaller roles or uncredited appearances in his own projects. After Dan Gilroy and Jack Black separately lamented the proliferation of superhero films, Gunn responded in a Facebook post, saying in part:


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn wrote and produced the horror film "The Belko Experiment", which was released in 2017. In 2016, he directed three Stan Lee cameo scenes in one day, for the film "Doctor Strange" and two unrevealed projects.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn wrote and directed "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017). Gunn was slated to direct "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" in July 2018, but before the project started, Disney severed ties with Gunn as the director amid controversy over off-color jokes he had tweeted. Gunn was rehired in March 2019 after a mass public appeal, many saying he was the reason of the previous movies' successes.


title: James Gunn

text: In October 2018, Gunn was hired to write a completely new script for the DC Extended Universe film "The Suicide Squad", with the intention of also serving as director, after its original director Gavin O'Connor left due to scheduling issues. In January 2019, he was officially confirmed to direct "The Suicide Squad". He also wrote, directed, and produced the spin-off television series for the film centered on the character Peacemaker played by John Cena for HBO Max. Gunn will also co-write and co-produce a live-action/animated film titled "Coyote vs. Acme", based on Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote, for the Warner Animation Group. He is also executive-producing a "Peacemaker" spin-off centered on Amanda Waller, with Christal Henry writing and Viola Davis reprising her role from previous DCEU projects. In addition, Gunn is writing and directing another project for DC. Gunn is also involved in multiple other DC projects, including television series.


title: James Gunn

text: In October 2022, he deepened his ties with DC when he was named co-chairman and co-CEO (with Peter Safran) of DC Studios. From this position, he will oversee creative development on most film, television and animated projects; the only exception as of date will be the film "", which will be overseen by Warner Bros. co-chairmen Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn wrote a novel in 2000, "The Toy Collector", a story of a hospital orderly who steals drugs from the hospital which he sells to help keep his toy collection habit alive. In 1998, he and Troma's President Lloyd Kaufman co-wrote "All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger", about his experiences with Kaufman while working at Troma.


title: James Gunn

text: He wrote the story for Grasshopper Manufacture's video game "Lollipop Chainsaw", working with game designer Suda 51.


title: James Gunn

text: In July 2018, in reaction to Gunn's public criticisms of Donald Trump, commentator Mike Cernovich drew attention to controversial jokes that Gunn posted on social media between 2008 and 2012 involving pedophilia and the Holocaust. Amid criticism of the tweets, Disney severed ties with Gunn as the director of the upcoming "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" film at the time; Gunn responded: "I have regretted [those jokes] for many years since. [...] Regardless of how much time has passed, I understand and accept the business decisions taken today. Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then. All I can do now [is offer] my sincere and heartfelt regret [...] To everyone inside my industry and beyond, I again offer my deepest apologies."


title: James Gunn

text: Walt Disney Studios's decision received criticism from many entertainers and journalists, including actors Dave Bautista, Selma Blair, Patton Oswalt, David Dastmalchian, Michael Ian Black, Mikaela Hoover, Mike Colter, Alex Winter, David Hasselhoff, directors Joe Carnahan and Fede Álvarez, comics artist Jim Starlin, musician Rhett Miller, comedian Jim Jefferies, "Rick and Morty" creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, journalist David A. French and Troma Entertainment founder and president Lloyd Kaufman. Bobcat Goldthwait, who worked as a voice actor on the 1997 Disney film "Hercules", responded to the incident by asking Disney to remove his voice from an upcoming park attraction based on the film.


title: James Gunn

text: A number of media outlets criticized Disney's decision, including "Collider", "Cartoon Brew", "The Daily Dot", "The Independent", "National Review", "MovieWeb", and "Vulture". An online petition urging Disney to re-hire Gunn received over 400,000 signatures. On July 30, 2018, "Guardians of the Galaxy" cast members Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Sean Gunn, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff and Michael Rooker released a joint statement through social media expressing their support for Gunn.


title: James Gunn

text: Because of the situation, Sony Pictures decided to not promote the horror film "Brightburn", which Gunn produced, at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con. However, when the first trailer for the film was released on December 8, 2018, Gunn's name was prominently featured. The film opened in May 2019.


title: James Gunn

text: In March 2019, Gunn was reinstated by Disney as director of the film after meeting with Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Gunn started production on "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" in October 2021, after "The Suicide Squad" had been completed.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn and Peter Safran had advised David Zaslav, the CEO of the newly-created Warner Bros. Discovery, during his search for a new head of DC Films. The duo impressed Zaslav who decided to appoint them as the co-chairpersons and CEOs of DC Films, rebranded as "DC Studios", with control over films, animation and television projects based on characters from DC Comics. Gunn oversees the creative aspects and will be exclusive to Warner Bros. Discovery during his tenure, except for his prior commitments to Disney. The two assumed their positions on November 1, 2022.


title: James Gunn

text: In December 2022, Gunn announced that he was writing a film about a young Superman during his early years in Metropolis.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn married actress Jenna Fischer on October 7, 2000. After seven years of marriage, Gunn and Fischer announced their separation in a joint statement on September 5, 2007, divorcing in 2008. The two remained friends. In 2010, Fischer persuaded Gunn to cast Rainn Wilson, her co-star on "The Office", in Gunn's film "Super".


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn has been in a relationship with actress Jennifer Holland since 2015. In February 2022, Holland and Gunn became engaged, and were married at the end of September 2022.


title: James Gunn

text: Gunn was raised in a Roman Catholic family and has mentioned how prayer continues to play an important role in his life, but has also said that he is "in some ways, anti-religion".


title: Yoko Ono

text: Yoko Ono ( ; , ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York City in 1953 with her family. She became involved with New York City's downtown artists scene in the early 1960s, which included the Fluxus group, and became well known in 1969 when she married English musician John Lennon of the Beatles. The couple used their honeymoon as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War. She and Lennon remained married until he was murdered in front of the couple's apartment building, the Dakota, on 8 December 1980. Together they had one son, Sean, who later also became a musician.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono began a career in popular music in 1969, forming the Plastic Ono Band with Lennon and producing a number of avant-garde music albums in the 1970s. She achieved commercial and critical acclaim in 1980 with the chart-topping album "Double Fantasy", a collaboration with Lennon that was released three weeks before his murder, winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. To date, she has had twelve number one singles on the US Dance charts, and in 2016 was named the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time by Billboard magazine. Many musicians have paid tribute to Ono as an artist in her own right and as a muse and icon, including Elvis Costello, the B-52's, Sonic Youth and Meredith Monk.


title: Yoko Ono

text: As Lennon's widow, Ono works to preserve his legacy. She funded the Strawberry Fields memorial in Manhattan's Central Park, the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, and the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Japan (which closed in 2010). She has made significant philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace, disaster relief in Japan and the Philippines, and other such causes. In 2002, she inaugurated a biennial $50,000 LennonOno Grant for Peace. In 2012, she received the Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Human Rights Award and co-founded the group Artists Against Fracking.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono was born on February 18, 1933, in Tokyo City, to (1911-1999) and , a wealthy banker and former classical pianist. Isoko's adoptive maternal grandfather was an affiliate of the Yasuda clan and zaibatsu. Eisuke came from a long line of samurai warrior-scholars. The kanji translation of "Yōko" () means "ocean child". Two weeks before Ono's birth, Eisuke was transferred to San Francisco, California by his employer, the Yokohama Specie Bank. The rest of the family followed soon after, with Ono first meeting her father when she was two years old. Her younger brother Keisuke was born in December 1936.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1937, the family was transferred back to Japan, and Ono enrolled at Tokyo's elite Gakushūin (also known as the Peers School), one of the most exclusive schools in Japan. Ono was enrolled in piano lessons from the age of 4, until the age of 12 or 13. She attended kabuki performances with her mother, who was trained in shamisen, koto, otsuzumi, kotsuzumi, nagauta, and could read Japanese musical scores.


title: Yoko Ono

text: The family moved to New York City in 1940. The next year, Eisuke was transferred from New York City to Hanoi, and the family returned to Japan. Ono was enrolled in Keimei Gakuen, an exclusive Christian primary school run by the Mitsui family. She remained in Tokyo throughout World War II and the fire-bombing of March 9, 1945, during which she was sheltered with other family members in a special bunker in Tokyo's Azabu district, away from the heavy bombing. Ono later went to the Karuizawa mountain resort with members of her family.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Starvation was rampant in the destruction that followed the Tokyo bombings; the Ono family was forced to beg for food while pulling their belongings in a wheelbarrow. Ono said it was during this period in her life that she developed her "aggressive" attitude and understanding of "outsider" status. Other stories tell of her mother bringing a large number of goods to the countryside, where they were bartered for food. In one anecdote, her mother traded a German-made sewing machine for of rice to feed the family. During this time, Ono's father, who had been in Hanoi, was believed to be in a prisoner of war camp in China. Ono told Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" on October 16, 2007, that "He was in French Indochina, which is Vietnam actually... in Saigon. He was in a concentration camp."


title: Yoko Ono

text: After the war ended in 1945, Ono remained in Japan when her family moved to the United States and settled in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent town north of midtown Manhattan. By April 1946, Gakushūin was reopened and Ono re-enrolled. The school, located near the Tokyo Imperial Palace, had not been damaged by the war, and Ono found herself a classmate of Prince Akihito, the future emperor of Japan. At 14 years old, she took up vocal training in lieder-singing.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono graduated from Gakushūin in 1951, and was accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University as the first woman to enter the department. However, she left the school after two semesters.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono joined her family in New York in September 1952, and enrolled at nearby Sarah Lawrence College. Ono's parents approved of her college choice, but disapproved of her lifestyle and chastised her for befriending people whom they felt were beneath her. In 1956, Ono left college to elope with Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, a star in Tokyo's experimental community, then studying at Juilliard.


title: Yoko Ono

text: At Sarah Lawrence, she studied poetry with Alastair Reid, English literature with Kathryn Mansell, and music composition with the Viennese-trained André Singer. Ono has said that her heroes at this time were the twelve-tone composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. She said, "I was just fascinated with what they could do. I wrote some twelve-tone songs, then my music went into [an] area that my teacher felt was really a bit off track, and... he said, 'Well, look, there are people who are doing things like what you do and they're called avant-garde.'" Singer introduced her to the work of Edgar Varèse, John Cage, and Henry Cowell. Ono left college and moved to New York in 1957, supporting herself through secretarial work and lessons in the traditional Japanese arts at the Japan Society.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono has often been associated with the Fluxus group, a loose association of Dada-inspired avant-garde artists which was founded in the early 1960s by Lithuanian-American artist George Maciunas. Maciunas admired and enthusiastically promoted her work, and gave Ono her first solo exhibition at his AG Gallery in New York in 1961. He formally invited Ono to join Fluxus, but she declined because she wanted to remain independent. However, she did collaborate with Maciunas, Charlotte Moorman, George Brecht, and the poet Jackson Mac Low, among others associated with the group.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono first met John Cage through his student Ichiyanagi Toshi, in Cage's experimental composition class at the New School for Social Research: She was introduced to more of Cage's unconventional neo-Dadaism first hand, and via his New York City protégés Allan Kaprow, Brecht, Mac Low, Al Hansen and the poet Dick Higgins.


title: Yoko Ono

text: After Cage finished teaching at the New School in the summer of 1960, Ono was determined to rent a place to present her works along with the work of other avant-garde artists in the city. She eventually found an inexpensive loft in downtown Manhattan at 112 Chambers Street and used the apartment as a studio and living space, also allowing composer La Monte Young to organize concerts in the loft. They both held a series of events there from December 1960 through June 1961; the events were attended by people such as Marcel Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim. Ono and Young both claimed to have been the primary curator of these events, with Ono claiming to have been eventually pushed into a subsidiary role by Young. Ono presented work only once during the series.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1961, years before meeting Lennon, Ono had her first major public performance in a concert at the 258-seat Carnegie Recital Hall (smaller than the "Main Hall"). This concert featured radical experimental music and performances.


title: Yoko Ono

text: The Chambers Street series hosted some of Ono's earliest conceptual artwork, including "Painting to Be Stepped On", a scrap of canvas on the floor that became a completed artwork upon the accrual of footprints. With that work, Ono suggested that a work of art no longer needed to be mounted on a wall and inaccessible. She showed this work and other instructional work again at Macunias's AG Gallery in July 1961. After Ono set a painting on fire at one performance, Cage advised her to treat the paper with flame retardant. She is credited for the album cover art for the album "Nirvana Symphony" by Toshiro Mayuzumi, released by Time Records in 1962.


title: Yoko Ono

text: After living apart for several years, Ono and Ichiyanagi filed for divorce in 1962. Ono returned home to live with her parents, and, suffering from clinical depression, was briefly placed into a Japanese mental institution.


title: Yoko Ono

text: On November 28, 1962, Ono married Anthony Cox, an American jazz musician, film producer, and art promoter who had been instrumental in securing her release from the mental institution. Ono's second marriage was annulled on March 1, 1963, because she had neglected to finalize her divorce from Ichiyanagi. After finalizing that divorce, Cox and Ono married again on June 6, 1963. She gave birth to their daughter Kyoko Chan Cox two months later, on August 8, 1963.


title: Yoko Ono

text: The marriage quickly fell apart, but the Coxes stayed together for the sake of their joint careers. They performed at Tokyo's Sogetsu Hall, with Ono lying atop a piano played by John Cage. Soon, the couple returned to New York with Kyoko. In the early years of the marriage, Ono left most of Kyoko's parenting to Cox while she pursued her art full-time, with Cox also managing her publicity.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono had a second engagement at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1965, in which she debuted "Cut Piece". In September 1966, Ono visited London to meet artist and political activist Gustav Metzger's Destruction in Art Symposium in September 1966. She was the only woman artist chosen to perform her own events and only one of two invited to speak. She premiered "The Fog Machine" during her "Concert of Music for the Mind" at the Bluecoat Society of Arts in Liverpool, England in 1967.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono and Cox divorced on February 2, 1969, and she married John Lennon later that same year. During a 1971 custody battle, Cox disappeared with their eight-year-old daughter. He won custody after successfully claiming that Ono was an unfit mother due to her drug use. Ono's ex-husband changed Kyoko's name to "Ruth Holman" and subsequently raised the girl in an organization known as the Church of the Living Word (or "the Walk"). Ono and Lennon searched for Kyoko for years, but to no avail. She would finally see Kyoko again in 1998.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono's first contact with any member of the Beatles occurred when she visited Paul McCartney at his home in London to obtain a Lennon–McCartney song manuscript for a book John Cage was working on, "Notations". McCartney declined to give her any of his manuscripts but suggested that Lennon might oblige. Lennon later gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word".


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono and Lennon first met on November 7, 1966, at the Indica Gallery in London, where she was preparing "Unfinished Paintings", her conceptual art exhibit about interactive painting and sculpture. They were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. One piece, "Ceiling Painting/Yes Painting", had a ladder painted white with a magnifying glass at the top. When Lennon climbed the ladder, he looked through the magnifying glass and was able to read the word "YES" which was written in miniature. He greatly enjoyed this experience as it was a positive message, whereas most concept art he encountered at the time was anti-everything.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Lennon was also intrigued by Ono's "Hammer a Nail" where viewers were invited to hammer a nail into a wooden board painted white. Although the exhibition had not yet opened, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." Ono feigned not knowing of the Beatles (even as she had gone to see Paul McCartney asking for a Beatle song score), but relented on the condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in."


title: Yoko Ono

text: In a 2002 interview, Ono said, "I was very attracted to him. It was a really strange situation." Ono started writing to Lennon, sending him her conceptual artworks, and soon the two began corresponding. In September 1967, Lennon sponsored Ono's solo "Half-A-Wind Show", at Lisson Gallery in London. When Lennon's wife Cynthia asked for an explanation of why Ono was telephoning them at home, he told her that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In early 1968, while the Beatles were making their visit to India, Lennon wrote the song "Julia" and included a reference to Ono: "Ocean child calls me", referring to the translation of Yoko's Japanese spelling. In May 1968, while his wife was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording a selection of avant-garde tape loops, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn". The recordings made by the two during this session ultimately became their first collaborative album, the musique concrete work "". When Lennon's wife returned home, she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon, who simply said, "Oh, hi."


title: Yoko Ono

text: On September 24 and 25, 1968, Lennon wrote and recorded "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", which contains sexual references to Ono. Ono became pregnant, but she suffered the miscarriage of a male child on November 21, 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted. On December 12, 1968, Lennon and Ono participated in the BBC documentary about The Rolling Stones, "The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus", along with several other high-profile musicians. Lennon performed his Beatles composition "Yer Blues" towards the end, with an improvised vocal performance by Ono rounding out the set. The film would not be released until 1996, due to the death of The Rolling Stones' founding member Brian Jones a few months after it was shot.


title: Yoko Ono

text: During the final two years of the Beatles, Lennon and Ono created and attended public protests against the Vietnam War. They collaborated on a series of avant-garde recordings, beginning in 1968 with "", which notoriously featured an unretouched image of the two artists nude on the front cover. The same year, the couple contributed an experimental sound collage to The Beatles' self-titled "White Album" called "Revolution 9", with Ono contributing additional vocals to "Birthday", and one lead vocal line on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", marking the only occasion in a Beatles recording in which a woman sings lead vocals.


title: Yoko Ono

text: On March 20, 1969, Lennon and Ono were married at the registry office in Gibraltar and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for Peace. They planned another Bed-In in the US, but were denied entry to the country. They held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Lennon later stated his regrets about feeling "guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me." The couple often combined advocacy with performance art, such as in "bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference, where they satirised prejudice and stereotyping by wearing a bag over their entire bodies. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko".


title: Yoko Ono

text: During the Amsterdam Bed In press conference, Yoko also earned controversy in the Jewish community for claiming during the press conference that, "If I was a Jewish girl in Hitler’s day, I would approach him and become his girlfriend. After 10 days in bed, he would come to my way of thinking. This world needs communication. And making love is a great way of communicating." It was acknowledged that some Nazis, including Nazi "First Lady" Magda Goebbels, had Jewish lovers at one point in their lives.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Lennon changed his name by deed poll on April 22, 1969, switching out "Winston" for "Ono" as a middle name. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon after that, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth. The couple settled at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill, Berkshire, in southeast England. When Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' last recorded album, "Abbey Road".


title: Yoko Ono

text: After "The Ballad of John and Yoko", Lennon and Ono decided it would be better to form their own band to release their newer, more personally representative work, rather than release the material as the Beatles. To this end they formed the Plastic Ono Band, a name coined by Lennon after Ono's use of "plastic stands" for recording purposes. The name had earlier been attached to a sound and light installation conceived by Ono which had been installed in the Apple press office. The installation consisted of four perspex columns, each representing a member of the Beatles, with one holding a tape recorder and amplifier, the second a closed-circuit TV and camera, the third a record player and amplifier, and the fourth a miniature light show and loud speaker.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In July 1969, Lennon's first solo single, "Give Peace a Chance" (backed by Ono's "Remember Love") was the first release to be credited to the Plastic Ono Band. It was followed in October by "Cold Turkey" (backed by Ono's "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for her Hand in the Snow)"). The singles were followed in December by the group's first album, "Live Peace in Toronto 1969", which had been recorded live at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in September. This incarnation of the group also consisted of guitarist Eric Clapton, bass player Klaus Voormann, and drummer Alan White. The first half of their performance consisted of rock standards. During the second half, Ono took to the microphone and performed two original feedback-driven compositions, "Don't Worry Kyoko" and "John John (Let's Hope For Peace)", constituting the entirety of the second half of the live album.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono released her first solo album, "Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band" in 1970, as a companion piece to Lennon's "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band". The two albums also had companion covers: Ono's featured a photo of her leaning on Lennon, and Lennon's a photo of him leaning on Ono. Her album included raw, harsh vocals, which bore a similarity with sounds in nature (especially those made by animals) and free jazz techniques used by wind and brass players. Performers included Ornette Coleman, other renowned free jazz performers, and Ringo Starr. Some songs on the album consisted of wordless vocalizations, in a style that would influence Meredith Monk and other musical artists who have used screams and vocal noise instead of words. The album reached No. 182 on the US charts.


title: Yoko Ono

text: When Lennon was invited to play with Frank Zappa at the Fillmore (then the Filmore West) on June 5, 1971, Ono joined them. Later that year, she released "Fly", a double album. In it, she explored slightly more conventional psychedelic rock with tracks including "Midsummer New York" and "Mind Train", in addition to a number of Fluxus experiments. She also received minor airplay with the ballad "Mrs. Lennon". The track "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)" was an ode to Ono's missing daughter, and featured Eric Clapton on guitar. In 1971, while studying with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Majorca, Spain, Ono's ex-husband Anthony Cox accused Ono of abducting their daughter Kyoko from the kindergarten. They reached an out of court agreement and the charges were dismissed. Cox eventually moved away with Kyoko. Ono would not see her daughter until 1998. During this time, she wrote "Don't Worry Kyoko", which also appears on Lennon and Ono's album "Live Peace in Toronto 1969", in addition to "Fly". Kyoko is also referenced in the first line of "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" when Yoko whispers "Happy Christmas, Kyoko", followed by Lennon whispering, "Happy Christmas, Julian." The song reached No. 4 in the UK, where its release was delayed until 1972, and has periodically reemerged on the UK Singles Chart. Originally a protest song about the Vietnam War, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" has since become a Christmas standard. That August the couple appeared together at a benefit in Madison Square Garden with Roberta Flack, Stevie Wonder, and Sha Na Na for mentally disabled children organized by WABC-TV's Geraldo Rivera.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In a 2018 issue of "Portland Magazine", editor Colin W. Sargent writes of interviewing Yoko while she was visiting Portland, Maine, in 2005. She spoke of driving along the coast with Lennon and dreamed of buying a house in Maine. "We talked excitedly in the car. We were looking for a house on the water… We did examine the place! We kept driving north along the water until I don't really remember the name of the town. We went quite a ways up, actually, because it was so beautiful."


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1973, Ono recorded a single, "Joseijoi Banzai, Parts 1 and 2" with musicians billed as the Plastic Ono Band and Elephants Memory and released it only in Japan. She cheered feminism by combining lyrics inspired by Japanese war songs with Pop rhythms, signalling a new direction.


title: Yoko Ono

text: After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Ono and Lennon lived together in London and then moved permanently to Manhattan to escape tabloid racism towards Ono. Their relationship became strained because Lennon was facing deportation due to drug charges that had been filed against him in England, and because of Ono's separation from her daughter. The couple separated in July 1973, with Ono pursuing her career and Lennon living between Los Angeles and New York with personal assistant May Pang; Ono had given her blessing to Lennon and Pang's relationship.


title: Yoko Ono

text: By December 1974, Lennon and Pang considered buying a house together, and he refused to accept Ono's phone calls. The next month, Lennon agreed to meet Ono, who claimed to have found a cure for smoking. After the meeting, Lennon failed to return home or call Pang. When she telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable, because he was exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment with Pang; he was stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from Ono was now over, though Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono and Lennon's son, Sean, was born on October 9, 1975, Lennon's 35th birthday. Following the birth of Sean, both Lennon and Ono took a hiatus from the music industry, with Lennon becoming a stay-at-home dad to care for his infant son. Sean has followed in his parents' footsteps with a career in music; he performs solo work, works with Ono and formed a band, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In early 1980, Lennon heard Lene Lovich and the B-52's' "Rock Lobster" while on vacation in Bermuda. The latter reminded him of Ono's musical sound and he took this as an indication that she had reached the mainstream (the band had in fact been influenced by Ono).


title: Yoko Ono

text: On the evening of December 8, 1980, Lennon and Ono were at the Record Plant Studio and working on Ono's song "Walking on Thin Ice". When they returned to the Dakota (their home in Manhattan), Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman, a Beatles fan who had been stalking Lennon for two months. "Walking on Thin Ice (For John)" was released as a single less than a month later, and became Ono's first chart success, peaking at No. 58 and gaining significant underground airplay.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1981, she released the album "Season of Glass", which featured the striking cover photo of Lennon's bloody spectacles next to a half-filled glass of water, with a window overlooking Central Park in the background. This photograph sold at an auction in London in April 2002 for about $13,000. In the liner notes to "Season of Glass", Ono explained that the album was not dedicated to Lennon because "he would have been offended—he was one of us." The album received highly favorable reviews and reflected the public's mood after Lennon's assassination.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1982, she released "It's Alright". The cover featured Ono in her wrap-around sunglasses, looking towards the sun, while on the back the ghost of Lennon looks over her and their son. The album scored minor chart success and airplay with the single "Never Say Goodbye".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1984, a tribute album titled "Every Man Has a Woman" was released, featuring a selection of songs written by Ono performed by artists such as Elvis Costello, Roberta Flack, Eddie Money, Rosanne Cash, and Harry Nilsson. Later that year, Ono and Lennon's final album, "Milk and Honey", was released as a mixture of unfinished Lennon recordings from the "Double Fantasy" sessions, and new Ono recordings. It peaked at No. 3 in the UK and No. 11 in the U.S., going gold in both countries as well as in Canada.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono funded the construction and maintenance of the Strawberry Fields memorial in Manhattan's Central Park, directly across from the Dakota, which was the scene of the murder and remains Ono's residence to this day. It was officially dedicated on October 9, 1985, which would have been his 45th birthday.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono's final album of the 1980s was "Starpeace", a concept album that she intended as an antidote to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system. On the cover, a warm, smiling Ono holds the Earth in the palm of her hand. "Starpeace" became Ono's most successful non-Lennon effort. The single "Hell in Paradise" was a hit, reaching No. 16 on the US dance charts and No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the video, directed by Zbigniew Rybczyński received major airplay on MTV and won "Most Innovative Video" at Billboard Music Video Awards in 1986.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1986, Ono set out on a goodwill world tour for "Starpeace", primarily visiting Eastern European countries.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1990, Ono collaborated with music consultant Jeff Pollack to honor what would have been Lennon's 50th birthday with a worldwide broadcast of "Imagine". Over 1,000 stations in over 50 countries participated in the simultaneous broadcast. Ono felt the timing was perfect, considering the escalating conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Germany.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono went on a musical hiatus following the release of "Starpeace", until she signed with Rykodisc in 1992 and released the comprehensive six-disc box set "Onobox". The box set included remastered highlights from Ono's solo albums and previously unreleased material from the 1974 "lost weekend" sessions. She also released a one-disc sampler of highlights from "Onobox", simply titled "Walking on Thin Ice". That year, she sat down for an extensive interview with music journalist Mark Kemp for a cover story in the alternative music magazine "Option". The story took a revisionist look at Ono's music for a new generation of fans more accepting of her role as a pioneer in the merger of pop and the avant-garde.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1994, Ono produced her own off-Broadway musical entitled "New York Rock", which featured Broadway renditions of her songs.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1995, she released "Rising", a collaboration with her son Sean and his then-band, Ima. "Rising" spawned a world tour that traveled through Europe, Japan, and the United States. The following year, she collaborated with various alternative rock musicians for an EP entitled "Rising Mixes". Guest remixers of "Rising" material included Cibo Matto, Ween, Tricky, and Thurston Moore.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1997, Rykodisc reissued Ono's catalog of solo recordings on CD, from "Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band" through "Starpeace". Ono and her engineer Rob Stevens personally remastered the audio, and various bonus tracks were added, including outtakes, demos, and live cuts. In the same year, Ono and the BMI Foundation established an annual music competition program for songwriters of contemporary musical genres to honor John Lennon's memory and his large creative legacy. Over $350,000 has been given through BMI Foundation's John Lennon Scholarships to talented young musicians in the United States, making it one of the most respected awards for emerging songwriters.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2000, she founded the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Japan, which housed over 130 pieces of Lennon and Beatles memorabilia from Ono's private collection. The museum closed in 2010.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono's feminist concept album "Blueprint for a Sunrise" was released in 2001. A month after the 9/11 attacks, Ono organized the concert "Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music" at Radio City Music Hall. Hosted by the actor Kevin Spacey and featuring Lou Reed, Cyndi Lauper and Nelly Furtado, it raised money for September 11 relief efforts and aired on TNT and the WB.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2002, Ono joined the B-52's in New York for their 25th anniversary concerts; she came out for the encore and performed "Rock Lobster" with the band. In March 2002, she was present with Cherie Blair at the unveiling of a seven-foot statue of Lennon to mark the renaming of Liverpool airport to Liverpool John Lennon Airport.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Beginning in 2003, some DJs remixed other Ono songs for dance clubs. For the remix project, she dropped her first name and became known simply as "ONO", in response to the "Oh, no!" jokes that dogged her throughout her career. Ono had great success with new versions of "Walking on Thin Ice", remixed by top DJs and dance artists including Pet Shop Boys, Orange Factory, Peter Rauhofer, and Danny Tenaglia. In April 2003, Ono's "Walking on Thin Ice (Remixes)" was rated number 1 on Billboard's Dance/Club Play chart, gaining Ono her first no. 1 hit. She would have a second no. 1 hit on the same chart in November 2004 with "Everyman... Everywoman...", a reworking of her song "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him".


title: Yoko Ono

text: During the Liverpool Biennial in 2004, Ono flooded the city with two images on banners, bags, stickers, postcards, flyers, posters and badges: one of a woman's naked breast, the other of the same model's vulva. During her stay in Lennon's city of birth, she said she was "astounded" by the city's renaissance. The piece, titled "My Mummy Was Beautiful", was dedicated to Lennon's mother, Julia, who had died when he was a teenager. According to Ono, the work was meant to be innocent, not shocking; she was attempting to replicate the experience of a baby looking up at its mother's body, those parts of the mother's body being a child's introduction to humanity.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono performed at the opening ceremony for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, Like many of the other performers during the ceremony, she wore white to symbolize the snow of winter. She read a free verse poem calling for world peace as an introduction to Peter Gabriel's performance of "Imagine".


title: Yoko Ono

text: On December 13, 2006, one of Ono's bodyguards was arrested after he was allegedly taped trying to extort $2 million from her. The tapes revealed that he threatened to release private conversations and photographs. His bail was revoked, and he pleaded not guilty to two counts of attempted grand larceny. On February 16, 2007, a deal was reached where extortion charges were dropped, and he pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny in the third degree, a felony, and was sentenced to the 60 days that he had already spent in jail. After reading an unapologetic statement, he was released to immigration officials because he had also been found guilty of overstaying his business visa.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono released the album "Yes, I'm a Witch" in February 2007, a collection of remixes and covers from her back catalog by various artists including The Flaming Lips, Cat Power, Anohni, DJ Spooky, Porcupine Tree, and Peaches, along with a special edition of "Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band". "Yes I'm a Witch" was critically well received. A similar compilation of Ono dance remixes entitled "Open Your Box" was also released in April.


title: Yoko Ono

text: On June 26, 2007, Ono appeared on "Larry King Live" along with McCartney, Starr and Olivia Harrison. She headlined the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on July 14, 2007, performing a full set that mixed music and performance art. She sang "Mulberry", a song about her time in the countryside after the Japanese collapse in World War II for only the third time ever, with Thurston Moore: She had previously performed the song with John and with Sean. On October 9 of that year, the Imagine Peace Tower on Viðey Island in Iceland, dedicated to peace and to Lennon, was turned on with her, Sean, Ringo, and Olivia in attendance. Each year between October 9 and December 8, it projects a vertical beam of light into the sky.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono returned to Liverpool for the 2008 Liverpool Biennial, where she unveiled "Sky Ladders" in the ruins of Church of St Luke (which was largely destroyed during World War II and now stands roofless as a memorial to those killed in the Liverpool Blitz). Two years later, on March 31, 2009, she went to the inauguration of the exhibition "Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko" to mark the 40th anniversary of the Lennon-Ono Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Canada, from May 26 to June 2, 1969. The hotel had been doing steady business with the room they stayed in for over 40 years. That year Ono became a grandmother when Emi was born to her daughter Kyoko.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono had further Dance/Club Play chart no. 1 hits with "No No No" in January 2008, and "Give Peace a Chance" the following August. In June 2009, at the age of 76, Ono scored her fifth no. 1 hit on the Dance/Club Play chart with "I'm Not Getting Enough".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In May 2009, she designed a T-shirt for the second Fashion Against AIDS campaign and collection of HIV/AIDS awareness, NGO Designers Against AIDS, and H&M, with the statement "Imagine Peace" depicted in 21 languages. Ono appeared onstage at Microsoft's June 1, 2009, E3 Expo press conference with Olivia Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr to promote the video game, which was universally praised by critics. Ono appeared on the Basement Jaxx album "Scars", featuring on the single "Day of the Sunflowers (We March On)". In the same year, she became an honorary patron to Alder Hey Charity, and created an exhibit called "John Lennon: The New York City Years" for the NYC Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex. The exhibit used music, photographs, and personal items to depict Lennon's life in New York. A portion of the cost of each ticket was donated to Spirit Foundation, a charitable foundation set up and founded by Lennon and Ono.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2009, Ono recorded "Between My Head and the Sky", which was her first album to be released as "Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band" since 1973's "Feeling the Space". The all-new Plastic Ono Band lineup included Sean Lennon, Cornelius, and Yuka Honda. On February 16, 2010, Sean organized a concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music called "We Are Plastic Ono Band", at which Yoko performed her music with Sean, Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Jim Keltner for the first time since the 1970s. Guests including Bette Midler, Paul Simon and his son Harper, and principal members of Sonic Youth and the Scissor Sisters interpreted her songs in their own styles.


title: Yoko Ono

text: On April 1, 2010, she was named the first "Global Autism Ambassador" by the Autism Speaks organization. She had created an artwork the year before for autism awareness and allowed it to be auctioned off in 67 parts to benefit the organization. In April 2010, RCRD LBL made available free downloads of Junior Boys' mix of "I'm Not Getting Enough", a single originally released 10 years prior on "Blueprint for a Sunrise". That song and "Wouldnit (I'm a Star)", released September 14, made it to Billboard's end of the year list of favorite Dance/Club songs at No. 23 and No. 50 respectively.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono appeared with Starr on July 7 at New York's Radio City Music Hall in celebration of Starr's 70th birthday, performing "With a Little Help from My Friends" and "Give Peace a Chance". On September 16, she and Sean attended the opening of Julian Lennon's photo exhibition at the Morrison Hotel in New York City, appearing for the first time photos with Cynthia and Julian. She also promoted his work on her website. On October 2, Ono and the Plastic Ono Band performed at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, with special guest Lady Gaga, whom she deeply admires.


title: Yoko Ono

text: On February 18, 2011 (her 78th birthday), Ono took out a full-page advert in the UK free newspaper "Metro" for "Imagine Peace 2011". It took the form of an open letter, inviting people to think of, and wish for, peace. With son Sean, she held a benefit concert to aid in the relief efforts for earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Japan on March 27 in New York City. The effort raised a total of $33,000. The same year, "Move on Fast" became her sixth consecutive number-one hit on the "Billboard" Hot Dance Club Songs chart and her eighth number-one hit overall. She also collaborated with The Flaming Lips on an EP entitled "The Flaming Lips with Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In July 2011, she visited Japan to support earthquake and tsunami victims and tourism to the country. During her visit, Ono gave a lecture and performance entitled "The Road of Hope" at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum, during which she painted a large calligraphy piece entitled "Dream" to help raise funds for construction of the Rainbow House, an institution for the orphans of the Great East Japan earthquake. She also collected the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her contributions to art and for peace, that she was awarded the year prior.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In January 2012, a Ralphi Rosario mix of her 1995 song "Talking to the Universe" became her seventh consecutive No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart. In March of the same year, she was awarded the 20,000-euro ($26,400) Oskar Kokoschka Prize in Austria. From June 19 to September 9, her work "To the Light" was exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in London. It was held in conjunction with the London 2012 Festival, a 12-week UK-wide celebration featuring internationally renowned artists from Midsummer's Day (June 21) to the final day of the Paralympic Games on September 9. The album "Yokokimthurston" was also released in 2012, featuring a collaboration with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. AllMusic characterized it as "focused and risk-taking" and "above the best" of the couple's experimental music, with Ono's voice described as "one-of-a-kind".


title: Yoko Ono

text: On June 29, 2012, Ono received a lifetime achievement award at the Dublin Biennial. During this (her second) trip to Ireland (the first was with John before they married), she visited the crypt of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell at Glasnevin Cemetery and Dún Laoghaire, from where Irish departed for England to escape the famine. In February 2013, Ono accepted the Rainer Hildebrandt Medal at Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie Museum, awarded to her and Lennon for their lifetime of work for peace and human rights. The next month, she tweeted an anti-gun message with the "Season of Glass" image of Lennon's bloodied glasses on what would have been her and Lennon's 44th anniversary, noting that guns have killed more than 1 million people since Lennon's death in 1980. She was also given a Congressional citation from the Philippines for her monetary aid to the victims of typhoon Pablo, as well as her donation to disaster relief efforts after typhoon Ondoy in 2009 and assistance of Filipino schoolchildren.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2013, she and the Plastic Ono Band released the LP "Take Me to the Land of Hell", which featured numerous guests including Yuka Honda, Cornelius, Hirotaka "Shimmy" Shimizu, mi-gu's Yuko Araki, Wilco's Nels Cline, Tune-Yards, Questlove, Lenny Kravitz, and Ad-Rock and Mike D of the Beastie Boys. In June 2013, she curated the Meltdown festival in London, where she played two concerts, one with the Plastic Ono Band, and the second on backing vocals during Siouxsie Sioux's rendition of "Walking on Thin Ice" at the "Double Fantasy" show. In July, OR Books published Ono's sequel to 1964's "Grapefruit", another book of instruction-based 'action poems' this time entitled, "Acorn".


title: Yoko Ono

text: Her online video for "Bad Dancer" released in November 2013, which featured some of these guests, was well-liked by the press. By the end of the year she had become one of three artists with two songs in the Top 20 Dance/Club and had two consecutive number 1 hits on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play Charts. On the strength of the singles "Hold Me" (Featuring Dave Audé) and "Walking on Thin Ice", the then-80-year-old beat Katy Perry, Robin Thicke and her friend Lady Gaga.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2014, "Angel" was Ono's twelfth number one on the US Dance chart. Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band continued to perform live into 2015.


title: Yoko Ono

text: On February 16, 2016, Manimal Vinyl released "Yes, I'm a Witch Too," which features remixes from Moby, Death Cab For Cutie, Sparks, and Miike Snow. Like its predecessor, "Yes, I'm a Witch Too" received critical acclaim. On February 26, 2016, Ono was hospitalized after suffering what was rumored to be a possible stroke. It was later announced that she was experiencing extreme symptoms of the flu. On September 6, 2016, Secretly Canadian announced that they would be re-issuing 11 of Ono's albums from 1968 to 1985; "Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins" through "Starpeace". In December 2016, "Billboard magazine" named her the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In October 2018, Ono released "Warzone", which included new versions of previously recorded tracks including "Imagine". Yoko Ono was among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In a piece for the "New Yorker" published in November 2021, it was noted that Ono had "withdrawn from public life", with her son Sean now acting as the public representative for the family's interests in the Beatles' business.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono was a pioneer of conceptual art and performance art. A seminal performance work is "Cut Piece", first performed in 1964 at the Yamaichi Concert Hall in Kyoto, Japan. The piece consisted of Ono, dressed in her best suit, kneeling on a stage with a pair of scissors in front of her. She invited and then instructed audience members to join her on stage and cut pieces of her clothing off. Confronting issues of gender, class and cultural identity, Ono sat silently until the piece concluded at her discretion. The piece was subsequently performed at the Sogetsu Art Centre in Tokyo that same year, New York's Carnegie Hall in 1965 and London's Africa Center as part of the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966. Of the piece, John Hendricks wrote in the catalogue to Ono's Japan Society retrospective: "["Cut Piece"] unveils the interpersonal alienation that characterizes social relationships between subjects, dismantling the disinterested Kantian aesthetic model... It demonstrates the reciprocity between artists, objects, and viewers and the responsibility beholders have to the reception and preservation of art."


title: Yoko Ono

text: Other performers of the piece have included Charlotte Moorman and John Hendricks. Ono reprised the piece in Paris in 2003, in the low post-9/11 period between the US and France, saying she hoped to show that this is "a time where we need to trust each other". In 2013, the Canadian singer Peaches reprised it at the multi-day Meltdown festival at the Southbank Centre in London, which Ono curated.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono's small book titled "Grapefruit" is another seminal piece of conceptual art. First published in 1964, the book reads as a set of instructions through which the work of art is completed-either literally or in the imagination of the viewer participant. One example is "Hide and Seek Piece: Hide until everybody goes home. Hide until everybody forgets about you. Hide until everybody dies." "Grapefruit" has been published several times, most widely distributed by Simon & Schuster in 1971, who reprinted it again in 2000. , art critic for "The Village Voice" and "Vogue", called "Grapefruit" "one of the monuments of conceptual art of the early 1960s". He noted that her conceptual approach was made more acceptable when white male artists like Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner came in and "did virtually the same things" she did, and that her take also has a poetic and lyrical side that sets it apart from the work of other conceptual artists.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono would enact many of the book's scenarios as performance pieces throughout her career, which formed the basis for her art exhibitions, including the highly publicized retrospective exhibition, "This Is Not Here" in 1971 at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, that was nearly closed when it was besieged by excited Beatles fans, who broke several of the art pieces and flooded the toilets. It was her last major exhibition until 1989's "" retrospective at the Whitney.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Nearly fifty years later in July 2013, she released a sequel to "Grapefruit", another book of instructions, "Acorn" via OR Books.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono was also an experimental filmmaker who made 16 short films between 1964 and 1972, gaining particular renown for a 1966 Fluxus film called simply "No. 4", often referred to as "Bottoms". The five-and-a-half-minute film consists of a series of close-ups of human buttocks walking on a treadmill. The screen is divided into four almost equal sections by the elements of the gluteal cleft and the horizontal gluteal crease. The soundtrack consists of interviews with those who are being filmed, as well as those considering joining the project. In 1996, the watch manufacturing company Swatch produced a limited edition watch that commemorated this film.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In March 2004, the ICA London, showed most of her films from this period in their exhibition "The Rare Films of Yoko Ono". She also acted in an obscure exploitation film in 1965, "Satan's Bed".


title: Yoko Ono

text: Another example of Ono's participatory art was her "Wish Tree" project, in which a tree native to the installation site is installed. Her 1996 "Wish Piece" had the following instructions:


title: Yoko Ono

text: Her "Wish Tree" installation in the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, established in July 2010, has attracted contributions from all over the world. Other installation locations include London; St. Louis; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Copenhagen; the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, California; Japan; Venice; Dublin; and, Miami at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in 2010.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2014 Ono's "Imagine Peace" exhibit opened at the Bob Rauschenburg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College in Fort Myers, Florida. Ono installed a billboard on U.S. Route 41 in Fort Myers to promote the show and peace. When the exhibit closed, wishes that had been placed on the installed Wish Trees were sent to the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland and added to the millions of wishes already there. "Imagine Peace" was also installed in Houston in 2011 through the Deborah Colton Gallery, returning in 2016.


title: Yoko Ono

text: One of two pieces Ono installed as part of the 2014 Folkestone Triennial, Earth Peace originally consisted of many parts and appeared in many locations and media around Folkestone, including posters, stickers, billboards and badges. Three of the pieces remain in Folkestone, on loan to the town and part of the Creative Folkestone Artworks collection. These include an inscribed stone, a flag - which is flown on an annual basis on International Peace Day and a beacon of light installed on the dome roof of The Grand in Folkestone Leas. Ono's beacon flashes a morse code message, "Earth Peace", across the English Channel.


title: Yoko Ono

text: The second of Ono's 2014 Folkestone Triennial pieces and now also on loan to the town as part of the Folkestone Artworks collection, "Skyladder" is displayed in two locations - on a high wall of the Quarterhouse bar and in the staircase of the Folkestone public library. "Skyladder" takes the form of an artistic 'instruction' or invitation to the people of Folkestone and beyond. The instruction reads: ""Audience should bring a ladder they like. Colour it. Word it. Take pictures of it. Keep adding things to it. And send it as a postcard to a friend"""."


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2015, Ono created the piece "Arising" in Venice. As part of the exhibition "Personal Structures", organised by Global Art Affairs, the installation was on view from June 1 through November 24, 2013, at the European Cultural Centre's Palazzo Bembo. In this feminist work of art, female silicon bodies were burnt in the Venetian lagoon, evoking the imagery of mythical phoenixes. When asked for the resemblance between the naming of her record "Rising" and this piece, Ono responded: ""Rising" was telling all people that it is time for us to rise and fight for our rights. But in the process of fighting together, women are still being treated separately in an inhuman way. It weakens the power of men and women all together. I hope "Arising" will wake up Women Power, and make us, men and women, heal together."


title: Yoko Ono

text: In October 2016, Ono unveiled her first permanent art installation in the United States; the collection is located in Jackson Park, Chicago and promotes peace. Ono was inspired during a visit to the Garden of the Phoenix in 2013 and feels a connection to the city of Chicago.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Participating in Lower Manhattan's River to River Festival in 2019, Ono presented her participatory installation "Add Color (Refugee Boat)" (1960/2019). The work comprises a white room with a white rowing boat in it, which were both covered by messages and drawings from members of the audience throughout the festival. Through the participatory nature of the work, the artist emphasised the need for solidarity and the history of immigrants and refugees in the United States. "Refugee Boat" belongs to Ono's "Add Color Painting" series, first enacted in 1960, which invites the audience to make marks over the designated objects, often white.


title: Yoko Ono

text: John Lennon once described his wife as "the world's most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does". Her circle of friends in the New York art world has included Kate Millett, Nam June Paik, Dan Richter, Jonas Mekas, Merce Cunningham, Judith Malina, Erica Abeel, Fred DeAsis, Peggy Guggenheim, Betty Rollin, Shusaku Arakawa, Adrian Morris, Stefan Wolpe, Keith Haring, and Andy Warhol (she was one of the speakers at Warhol's 1987 funeral), as well as George Maciunas and La Monte Young. In addition to Mekas, Maciunas, Young, and Warhol, she has also collaborated with DeAsis, Yvonne Rainer and Zbigniew Rybczyński.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1989, the Whitney Museum held a retrospective of her work, "Yoko Ono: Objects, Films", marking Ono's reentry into the New York art world after a hiatus. At the suggestion of Ono's live-in companion at the time, interior decorator Sam Havadtoy, she recast her old pieces in bronze after some initial reluctance. "I realized that for something to move me so much that I would cry, there's something there. There seemed like a shimmering air in the 60s when I made these pieces, and now the air is bronzified. Now it's the 80s, and bronze is very 80s in a way – solidity, commodity, all of that. For someone who went through the 60s revolution, there has of course been an incredible change. . . . I call the pieces petrified bronze. That freedom, all the hope and wishes are in some ways petrified."


title: Yoko Ono

text: Over a decade later, in 2001, "Y E S YOKO ONO", a 40-year retrospective of Ono's work, received the International Association of Art Critics USA Award for Best Museum Show Originating in New York City, considered one of the highest accolades in the museum profession. YES refers to the title of a 1966 sculptural work by Yoko Ono, shown at Indica Gallery, London: viewers climb a ladder to read the word "yes", printed on a small canvas suspended from the ceiling. The exhibition's curator Alexandra Munroe wrote that "John Lennon got it, on his first meeting with Yoko: when he climbed the ladder to peer at the framed paper on the ceiling, he encountered the tiny word YES. 'So it was positive. I felt relieved.'" The exhibition traveled to 13 museums in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Korea from 2000 through 2003. In 2001, she received an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Liverpool University and, in 2002, was presented with the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from Bard College


title: Yoko Ono

text: and the Skowhegan Medal for work in assorted media. The next year, she was awarded the fifth MOCA Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts from the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. In 2005, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Japan Society of New York, which had hosted "Yes Yoko Ono" and where she had worked in the late 1950s and early 1960s.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2008, she showed a large retrospective exhibition, "Between The Sky and My Head", at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England. The following year, she showed a selection of new and old work as part of her show "Anton's Memory" in Venice, Italy. She also received a Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2012, Ono held a major exhibition of her work "To The Light" at the Serpentine Galleries, London. She was also the winner of the 2012 Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria's highest award for applied contemporary art. In February 2013, to coincide with her 80th birthday, the largest retrospective of her work, "Half-a-Wind Show", opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt


title: Yoko Ono

text: and travelled to Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Austria's Kunsthalle Krems, and Spain's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2014 she contributed several artworks to the triennial Folkestone art festival. In 2015 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a retrospective exhibition of her early work, "Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960– 1971".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 2022 the Kunsthaus Zürich opened a retrospective, "Yoko Ono. This Room Moves at the Same Speed as the Clouds".


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono has been an activist for peace and human rights since the 1960s. After she and Lennon married in Gibraltar, they held a March 1969 "Bed-In for Peace" in their honeymoon suite at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. The newlyweds were eager to talk about and promote world peace; they wore pajamas and invited visitors and members of the press. Two months later, Ono and Lennon held another Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Fairmont in Montreal, where they recorded their first single, "Give Peace A Chance". The song became a top-20 hit for the newly christened Plastic Ono Band. Other performance/demonstrations with John included "bagism", iterations with John of the "Bag Piece"s she introduced in the early 1960s, which encouraged a disregard for physical appearance in judging others. In December 1969, the two continued to spread their message of peace with billboards in 12 major world cities reading "WAR IS OVER! If You Want It – Happy Christmas from John & Yoko".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In the 1970s, Ono and Lennon became close to many radical, counterculture leaders, including Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Michael X, John Sinclair (for whose rally in Michigan they flew to sing Lennon's song "Free John Sinclair" that effectively released the poet from prison), Angela Davis, and street musician David Peel. Friend and "Sexual Politics" author Kate Millett has said Ono inspired her activism. Ono and Lennon appeared on "The Mike Douglas Show", taking over hosting duties for a week. Ono spoke at length about the evils of racism and sexism. She remained outspoken in her support of feminism, and openly bitter about the racism she had experienced from rock fans, especially in the UK. Her reception within the US media was not much better. For example, an "Esquire" article of the period was titled "John Rennon's Excrusive Gloupie" and featured an unflattering David Levine cartoon.


title: Yoko Ono

text: After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, Ono paid for billboards to be put up in New York City and Los Angeles that bore the image of Lennon's blood-splashed spectacles. Early in 2002 she paid about £150,000 ($213,375) for a billboard in Piccadilly Circus with a line from Lennon's "Imagine": "Imagine all the people living life in peace." Later the same year, she inaugurated a peace award, the LennonOno Grant for Peace, by giving $50,000 (£31,900) in prize money originally to artists living "in regions of conflict". The award is given out every two years in conjunction with the lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower, and was first given to Israeli and Palestinian artists. Its program has since expanded to include writers, such as Michael Pollan and Alice Walker, activists such as Vandana Shiva and Pussy Riot, organizations such as New York's Center for Constitutional Rights, even an entire country (Iceland).


title: Yoko Ono

text: On Valentine's Day 2003, which was the eve of the Iraqi invasion by the US and UK, Ono heard about a couple, Andrew and Christine Gale, who were holding a love-in protest in their tiny bedroom in Addingham, West Yorkshire. She phoned them and said, "It's good to speak to you. We're supporting you. We're all sisters together." The couple said that songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine" inspired their protest. In 2004, Ono remade her song "Everyman... Everywoman..." to support same-sex marriage, releasing remixes that included "Every Man Has a Man Who Loves Him" and "Every Woman Has a Woman Who Loves Her".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In August 2011, she made the documentary film about the Bed-Ins "Bed Peace" available for free on YouTube, and as part of her website "Imagine Peace".


title: Yoko Ono

text: In January 2013, the 79-year-old Ono, along with Sean Lennon and Susan Sarandon, took to rural Pennsylvania in a bus under the banner of the Artists Against Fracking group she and Sean created with Mark Ruffalo in August 2012 to protest against hydraulic fracturing. Other group members include Lady Gaga and Alec Baldwin.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Ono promotes her art and shares inspirational messages and images through a robust and active Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook presence. In April 2014 her Twitter followers reached 4.69 million, while her Instagram followers exceeded 99,000. Her tweets are short instructional poems, comments on media and politics, and notes about performances.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In 1987, Ono travelled to Moscow to participate in the "International Forum for a Nuclear-free World and for the Survival of Mankind". She also visited Leningrad, where she met with members of the local John Lennon memorial club. Among these members was Kolya Vasin, who was considered the biggest Beatles fan in the Soviet Union.


title: Yoko Ono

text: Public appreciation of Ono's work has shifted over time and was helped by a retrospective at a Whitney Museum branch in 1989 and the 1992 release of the six-disc box set "Onobox". Retrospectives of her artwork have also been presented at the Japan Society in New York City in 2001, in Bielefeld, Germany, and the UK in 2008, Frankfurt, and Bilbao, Spain, in 2013 and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2015. She received a Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale in 2009 and the 2012 Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria's highest award for applied contemporary art.


title: Yoko Ono

text: In January 2021 Ono was one of the founders of The Coda Collection, a service that launched in the U.S. via Amazon Prime Video Channels on February 18, 2021, the day Ono turned 88. The Coda Collection will feature a slew of music documentaries and concert films. Jim Spinello will run The Coda Channel. Yoko Ono added, “John Lennon was always on the cutting edge of music and culture. The Coda Collection will be a new way for fans to connect on a deeper level.”