YOKO ONO IMAGINE PEACE, featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace, focuses on the thematic ideals of peace and love, and follows the work of Yoko Ono and John Lennon chronologically as solo artists, as a couple in the 1960s, and also includes Ono's recent solo works. The exhibition which is free and open to the public, opens Friday, July 6, 2007, in the Emily Davis Gallery with a reception from 6 – 10 pm.

The exhibition showcases interactive works of Yoko Ono which demonstrate her long-standing ambition to involve individuals in the process of achieving peace through the power of imagination. Ono’s installations included in the Myers School of Art exhibition are designed to help visitors spread the message of love and peace worldwide through use of stamps, postcards, flashlights, and buttons. These works include: Play it by Trust; Imagine Peace; Onochord; and the Imagine Peace Tower.

Other exhibition features include photo-documentation of the world-wide broadcast of the Beatles All You Need is Love, and the accompanying parade of signs with the word “love” in several languages. Collaborative works, such as their Acorn Event, Bed-In, and the international advertising campaign War is Over! are represented by films, large-scale photomurals, and lithographs.

The Yoko Ono Imagine Peace exhibition at the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art (150 E. Exchange St., Akron) also features screenings of Ono’s films, the film John Lennon vs. the U.S.A., a performance of Ono’s Cut Piece (1964), a billboard display, boxed-set catalogue, posters and lectures. Visit the website for more details and updates throughout the summer.

Akron, Ohio, May 22, 2007 – This summer, the Emily Davis Gallery at The University of Akron’s Mary Schiller Myers School of Art invites you to imagine peace.

The exhibition, Yoko Ono Imagine Peace, featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace, opens Friday, July 6, and will run through Friday, Sept. 7. Focusing on the thematic ideals of peace and love, the exhibition will chronologically follow the artist Ono from her early advertising pieces through her collaborations with John Lennon and her recent solo work.

Coinciding with the celebrations planned for the re-opening of the Akron Art Museum, the exhibition’s opening reception will be free and open to the public on July 6 from 6 to 10 p.m. at Folk Hall, 150 E. Exchange St., on The University of Akron campus. Gallery hours during the opening weekend are Sat., 10-8 pm and Sun. 10-6 pm.

For more information about Yoko Ono Imagine Peace, featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace, call 330-972-5951, or contact www.uakron.edu/art for details and updates on the exhibition throughout the summer. Summer gallery hours will be Mon. to Sat., 12 – 6:00 pm, Thurs. until 8 pm, closed Sunday. The exhibition will also be open on Saturday, August 4, until 10 pm as part of the Northside Arts District Arts Walk.

Dr. Kevin Concannon, associate professor of art at The University of Akron’s Mary Schiller Myers School of Art and the curator of the exhibition, says that Yoko Ono has a specific purpose for Imagine Peace.

“Her recent installations that she wanted to include in our exhibition at the Myers School of Art are consistent with the message of peace that has been a hallmark of her work since the early 1960s, and are designed to help visitors spread the message of love and peace worldwide,” explains Concannon.

Ono summarizes her vision for the exhibition at The University of Akron with a piece she wrote this month:

“Visualize the domino effect. Just start thinking Peace. The message will circulate faster than you think.

It's time for action. And the action is Peace. Spread the word. Spread Peace.”

Yoko Ono’s recent interactive works demonstrate her desire to involve individuals in the process of achieving peace through the power of imagination.

Four of these interactive works will be in the Emily Davis Gallery exhibition at The University of Akron. Play it by Trust, an all white garden chess set with two-foot high pieces, can be played according to directions in the works’ title. Imagine Peace invites gallery visitors to use rubber stamps and inkpads to stamp “Imagine Peace” on a set of world maps. For Onochord, Ono has videotaped instructions to encourage gallery visitors to use small keychain flashlights to beam the message “I Love You” out into the world.

Ono’s rendering of her Imagine Peace Tower, currently under construction in Reykjavik, Iceland, will be an interactive highlight of the Akron exhibition. Scheduled for completion by Oct. 9, 2007 — which would have been John Lennon’s 67th birthday — the illuminated tower will stand between 20 and 30 meters high and be one meter in diameter.

The tower’s exterior, engraved with the lyrics to Lennon’s Imagine, will contain peace messages on postcards from around the world that Yoko Ono is collecting.

Ono has already gathered more than 900,000 postcards, and she will collect more during the exhibition at The University of Akron. Visitors to Imagine Peace will be encouraged to express their own wishes on provided postcards that will become part of the peace tower installation in Iceland.

Yoko Ono Imagine Peace, featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace will also examine the collaborative work of the well-known couple. Before they met, Lennon and Ono each sought to bring attention to the peace movement and the power of love. When Lennon and Ono united forces personally and artistically in May 1968, Lennon’s international fame as a Beatle brought unprecedented attention to their collaborative art events and happenings.

Some of these works in Yoko Ono Imagine Peace include photo-documentation of the worldwide broadcast of the Beatles’ All You Need is Love and the accompanying parade of signs with the word “love” in multiple languages. Others are Acorn Event, Bed-In, and the international advertising campaign War is Over! represented by films, large-scale photomurals, and lithographs.

The Yoko Ono Imagine Peace exhibition at the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art also features audio clips and screenings of Ono’s films and the documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006), a billboard display, a boxed-set catalog, posters, and lectures.

An extension of the exhibition includes a performance of Ono’s classic 1964 Cut Piece on Wednesday, Aug. 29, at the Akron-Summit County Public Library. The 7 pm performance will be free and open to the public.

Following its premiere at The University of Akron, the exhibition will travel to the University of Texas at San Antonio this fall, where it will be featured at the school’s Department of Art and Art History.