Tickets

Yoko Ono Painting to Be Stepped On 1961/1998

  • MoMA, Floor 4, 405 The David Geffen Galleries

In 1961 Ono presented Painting to Be Stepped On at AG Gallery in New York. She placed a cut piece of canvas beside a card that read, in handwritten text, A WORK TO BE STEPPED ON, inviting viewers to walk on the artwork itself.

In 1998 the artist made a new version of the work—based on a 1966 revision shown at London's Indica Gallery—for an exhibition at Andre Emmerich Gallery in New York. This latest iteration features a framed blank canvas with a metal placard inscribed with the title Painting to Be Stepped On. For Ono, the work’s physical existence was secondary to the potential activities she anticipated it generating in viewers’ minds. Though this version cannot be stepped on here, it evokes Ono’s bold call for an interactive art.

Gallery label from 2024
Medium
Acrylic and graphite on canvas with metal placard
Dimensions
overall: 20 3/16 x 15 13/16 x 1 3/4" (51.2 x 40.2 x 4.5 cm)
Edition
3
Credit
The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift
Object number
4427.2008
Department
Drawings and Prints

Installation views

We have identified these works in the following photos from our exhibition history.

How we identified these works

In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

If you notice an error, please contact us at [email protected].

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].