\u00a9 Yoko Ono. Photo by and \u00a9 Clay Perry<\/p>\n
\u201cLight a match and watch till it goes out.\u201d<\/p>\n
That nine-word imperative comprises one of Yoko Ono\u2019<\/a>s earliest mature artworks, an \u201cInstruction\u201d typed out on plain paper. Titled Lighting Piece and dated \u201c1955 autumn,\u201d it helped ignite a practice that, for the remainder of the 20th century and well into the 21st, would revolve around the viewer stepping into the role of essential participant in the completion of a work of art.<\/p>\n Before Sol LeWitt abandoned the physical act of making paintings in favor of designing them and letting others handle the brushes, before Tino Sehgal created \u201cConstructed Situations\u201d that exist solely as encounters between spectators and facilitators, before Yayoi Kusama invited people to cover every surface of an all-white room in brightly colored stickers, there was Ono.<\/p>\n Though her art has been overshadowed for more than half a century by her status as a pop-culture icon, the 93-year-old multidisciplinary artist has been the subject of a growing reevaluation in recent years, culminating in a traveling retrospective, Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, which recently opened at what is likely its last stop, the Broad in Los Angeles, and which explores her lifelong themes of collectivity and connectivity.<\/p>\n To the countless throngs who still hear \u201cYoko Ono\u201d and think \u201cJohn Lennon<\/a>,\u201d the exhibition stands to be a revelation. As Sarah Loyer, curator and exhibitions manager at the Broad, notes of the chronological display, \u201cYou don’t encounter John Lennon until about halfway through the show. She did a lot in the decade-plus before they met.\u201d<\/p>\n