Kyoko Chan Cox

Yoko Ono Lennon
Yoko Ono at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, Brazil in 2007
Born	Yoko Ono (1933-02-18) February 18, 1933 (age 84) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Artist peace activist singer songwriter
Spouse(s)	Toshi Ichiyanagi (m. 1956; div. 1962) Anthony Cox (m. 1962; annulled 1963) (m. 1963; div. 1969) John Lennon (m. 1969; his death 1980)
Children	2, including Sean Lennon
Musical career
Genres	Avant-garde downtown performance art experimental rock pop new wave
Instruments	Vocals percussion piano
Years active	1961–present
Labels	Apple Geffen Polydor Rykodisc Manimal Vinyl Astralwerks Chimera
Associated acts	John Lennon Plastic Ono Band Sean Lennon
Website	imaginepeace.com

Yoko Ono (born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist who is also known for her work in performance art and filmmaking. She is the second wife and widow of singer-songwriter John Lennon of the Beatles.

Ono grew up in Tokyo, and studied at Gakushuin. She withdrew from her course after two years and rejoined her family in New York in 1953. She spent some time at Sarah Lawrence College, and then became involved in New York City's downtown artists scene, including the Fluxus group. She first met Lennon in 1966 at her own art exhibition in London, and they became a couple in 1968. Ono and Lennon famously used their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War with their performance, Bed-Ins for Peace, in Amsterdam and Montreal in 1969. She brought feminism to the forefront in her music, influencing artists as diverse as the B-52s and Meredith Monk. Ono achieved commercial and critical acclaim in 1980 with the chart-topping album Double Fantasy, a collaboration with Lennon released three weeks before his death.

Public appreciation of Ono's work has shifted over time, 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, and Frankfurt, and Bilbao, Spain, in 2013. 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.