In celebration of Yoko Ono‘s 92nd birthday, the iconic Wish Tree installation was showcased at the historic Park Avenue Armory  in the Upper East Side of Manhattan from February 14-17, 2025. This iteration, the largest in North America, featured a grove of 92 Magnolia and Cedar trees filling the space in the monumental Wade Thompson Drill Hall. This serene forest of wishes paid homage to both Ono’s enduring artistic legacy and her life-long dedication to peace.

Since 1996, Wish Tree has been installed all over the world, inviting audiences from  a diverse range of cultures to share their hopes and dreams through a simple, but deeply profound, gesture: writing a wish and tying it to the branch of a tree. Each location added a new layer of meaning, blending the desires of individuals into a collective expression of humanity’s aspirations.

Over the years, the installation has been featured in a multitude of locations, including: Finland (pre-1996), Alicante, Valencia, Spain (1996), the San Francisco MoMA  (2002), Exeter, England (2002), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection  in Venice, Italy (2003), Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC and Sao Paulo (2007), Pasadena, California (2008), Stanford University, CA and Tokyo (2009), the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY and Obelin College, Ohio (2010), Wall Street/Zuccotti Park, NYC, Dublin and the Serpentine Galleries in London (2012), the Brooklyn Museum (2012-13), the St. Louis Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia  (2013), the Guggenheim Bilbao,, Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando and Tampa, Florida (2014), the Manhattan Beach Art Center, CA, and Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016), Performa 17 NY (2018), Bad Homburg vor der Hohe (2019), the Tate Modern, London (2024) and Park Avenue Armory, NY (2025). 

Upon entering the Armory, the visitors are greeted by small cards bearing messages such as “IMAGINE PEACE,” “PEACE is POWER,” and “SURRENDER TO PEACE.” These slogans, emblematic of Ono’s lifelong “Imagine Peace” campaign, set the tone for the interactive experience ahead.

Ono’s simple yet powerful instructions for the Wish Tree read:

Wish Tree
Make a wish.
Write it down on a piece of paper.
Fold it and tie it around a branch of the wish tree.
Ask your friends to do the same.
Keep wishing.
Yoko Ono

Over 6,600 attendees have participated so far, filling the trees with their hopes, dreams, and desires. On February 19, 2025, these tags were sent to the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavík, Iceland, where they would be stored as part of the ever-growing archive of wishes from around the globe.

The Imagine Peace Tower, which Ono unveiled on what would have been John Lennon 67th birthday in 2007, is a monument to peace situated on Viðey Island in Kollafjörður Bay. The tower projects a beam of light into the sky, much like New York’s Tribute in Light, commemorating the victims of 9/11. The beam mingles with the Northern Lights, creating a stunning fusion of nature and art, embodying the optimism of a world united in peace.

In a 2007 interview with the Hirshhorn Museum’s Chief Curator Kerry Brougher, Yoko Ono shared the deeply personal origins of her Wish Tree concept, tracing it back to her childhood memories in Japan:
“It belongs to a memory I had in childhood. I used to go to temples and shrines… give 10 dollars or a dime… write down your wish for health, longevity, or such… then twist the paper and put it on the branch of a bush.”
This act, both intimate and sacred, planted the seed for what would become a global art installation—one that invites the world to express their hopes and dreams in the same spirit of faith and connection.

Ono also reflected on her decision to place the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, choosing this location for its symbolic and environmental purity:
“It is difficult to communicate with people of the whole world, but the northernmost country’s people can drag down the message to all of the world. A simple geometric thing. Iceland is a very interesting country. 80% of the energy they use is geothermal rather than oil. The country is beautiful. There is no pollution; the water is beautiful, the earth is clean, the air is clean. I want most countries to be healed by copying the process of Iceland.”

This vision for healing and peace, not just for individuals but for the earth itself, is central to Ono’s artistic philosophy. The Wish Tree is more than an installation—it is a participatory act of hope, bridging the intimate with the universal.

Ono’s interactive approach to art—where the audience completes the work through their participation—has been a defining hallmark of her career since the 1960s. In 1961, at the AG Gallery in New York, she presented Painting to Be Stepped On, a radical piece that invited visitors to literally step on the artwork. Though the piece, she challenged the traditional notions of art and emphasized its transient, living nature. 

Ono’s early works often took the form of simple yet profound instructions, such as Lighting Piece (1955). Through guiding words such as “Light a match and watch it burn,” she transformed everyday actions into powerful moments of reflection.

The Wish Tree continues Ono’s exploration of instruction-based art while extending the peaceful ethos that she and John Lennon embodied in their famous 1969 Bed-In for Peace. In the midst of the Vietnam War, the couple staged a week-long protest from the confines of their hotel bed at the Amsterdam Hilton, using their fame and the media’s attention to deliver a message of love and peace. The Wish Tree follows this tradition—quietly powerful, it offers individuals an opportunity to contribute to a collective vision for a better world.

As Ono has often said in interviews, “Art is my survival kit. Without creating my work, I could have never survived.” These words reveal the depth of her relationship to art—not merely as an expression but as a vital force that sustains her, just as her work now sustains and inspires millions of individuals across the globe.