Happy Birthday, Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono by @MatthuPlacek, 18 Feb 2013, via @yokoono

Artist and peace activist Yoko Ono, wife of the late John Lennon, turns 80 today. Boing Boing interviewed her two years ago, when she was honored with the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize, an award for artists whose work has contributed to peace. To commemorate the award, The Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art hosted "The Road of Hope: Yoko Ono," an exhibit honoring the "spirit of Hiroshima that yearns for permanent world peace and prosperity for all humanity."

I spoke to Yoko Ono in Japan a few days after she received the Hiroshima prize. She was in Tokyo, and so was I. Read our conversation here.

Related: An appreciation by Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds, who first schooled me on the full awesomeness of her legacy as an avant-garde artist, which long predated her relationship with Lennon.