Japan Institute and Portland Japanese Garden will be partnering with the Nobel Peace Center, Yoko Ono’s studio and public gardens around the world to feature a global Wish Tree installation. The Wish Tree is an interactive artwork created by acclaimed artist and global peace advocate Yoko Ono. […] From June 7-10, the Wish Tree will be installed in the Tateuchi Courtyard, where visitors will be invited to reflect and write their wishes for peace that will then be tied to the Wish Tree’s branches. After its presence here concludes, the wishes are preserved and continue on in connection with the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Reykjavík, Iceland, to join the chorus of global citizens calling for peace.

The question of Yoko Ono’s marriage to John Lennon sits like a water buffalo at the center of any conversation about her eight decades of work as an artist. It is oversized, hairy, imposing, impossible to ignore, tricky to get around. Do you tiptoe past it, slink away from it, or approach it head-on? [...] Coming from opposite directions, John Lennon and Yoko Ono met at the same place, as her work suggests a high artist searching for ways of liberating the avant-garde from arid intellectualism and going for the gut, the heart. Throughout the exhibition “Yoko Ono: Music for the Mind,” (at Tate Modern, until 1st September) pleasure comes into the equation, with works conceived to make you smile, giggle, or, perhaps oddest of all in the context of the art world, just feel warm. (Cut Piece is a notable exception.) With Ono, there’s always an impulse to embrace the unseriousness of the serious. In this way she’s not unlike the very best pop musicians. She was, after all, married to one, and perhaps it was he who said it best: “Her work is far out.”