Ono and Baldessari to Receive Golden Lions in Venice

Published: February 24, 2009

Yoko Ono

John Baldessari Malick Sidibe Yoko Ono Ono, Plensa, Coyne, and Wodiczko Celebrate Award Wins Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949–78 Less Is More at This Year’s Frieze The Frieze Fringe In Museums

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VENICE—Yoko Ono and John Baldessari will be awarded Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement at this year's Venice Biennale, Agence France-Presse reports. The artists are being honored for having "revolutionized the language of art," according to a statement from the biennale.

Ono and Baldessari are artists "whose ground-breaking activities have opened new poetic, conceptual, and social possibilities for artists around the globe working in all media," said biennale curator Daniel Birnbaum. "[They] have shaped our understanding of art and its relationship to the world in which we live."

In 2007, Malian photographer Malick Sidibe became the first African to win the event's top honor.

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This year's awards will be presented on June 6 during the opening of the biennale, which is titled "Making Worlds." The show runs June 7 to November 22.

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