As a child in war-torn Japan, Yoko Ono remembers looking at the sky and feeling it was her only connection to her former life.

“There were days when Yoko and her brother were so weak from near-starvation, all they could do was lie on the ground and stare at the sky,” art historian Nora Halpern said Sunday in her opening remarks at the MacDowell Medal Day ceremony honoring Ono’s 70-year career.

“Yoko’s experiences as a child in Japan, surviving the firebombing of Tokyo, her family  experiencing near starvation – that is why she is so focused on peace,” Halpern, a longtime friend of Ono’s, said of the musician, artist, singer-songwriter and activist. “Yoko is open, optimistic and forgiving, and her goal is for unity between all people. Her work has such simplistic strength and optimism.” 

Halpern also joked that the 91-year-old Ono, who watched the ceremony via livestream from her home in New York City, is also “omnipresent,” even though she was unable to travel to Peterborough to accept the medal in person. Halpern described one of Ono’s installations, “White Chess Set,” an all-white chess board with all-white pieces that has been installed all over the world, as representative of the artist’s focus on peace. 

“The white chess set puts all the players on the same team. It changes all the rules and forces people to play in a completely different way,” Halpern said. “Yoko’s work is about  succinct calls to expansive action.” 

Halpern noted that while Ono has had a celebrated 70-year career in music and multidisciplinary art, her career has long been overshadowed by her association with her late husband, musician John Lennon. 

“John was originally drawn to Yoko because of her art,” Halpern said. “It is hard that she is forever in his shadow.” 

David Newgarden, who has been Ono’s music manager since 2008, accepted the Edward MacDowell Medal on Ono’s behalf. Nell Painter, chair of the board of MacDowell, thanked musician and filmmaker Laurie Anderson for her leadership in selecting Ono as the 64th recipient of the medal. Previous winners include filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, poet Sonia Sanchez, writer Toni Morrison, composer Stephen Sondheim, artist Jasper Johns and writer Thornton Wilder.

“Yoko Ono has had a seven-decade career, and she has always been on the cutting edge. What we see here today is not for us, it is work for people seven generations in the future,” Painter said. 

Newgarden, who began as Ono’s music manager in 2008, said that when he started working with her, she “had not made music  for a long time.” In 2010, Ono started to perform again with the Plastic Ono Band. Newgarden said Ono named the band “plastic,” meaning that would it always been fluid and changing. Newgarden spoke about how Ono’s art influenced Lennon, inspiring some of Lennon’s most well-known later works, including “Imagine,” and performances such as the “Bed-In for Peace.”

“In turn, he inspired her to play rock music,” Newgarden said. 

Since returning to performance in 2008, Ono has performed with artists that include Paul Simon, Lady Gaga and RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan.

“Yoko has always been eerily ahead of her time-as an artist, as a musician, as an activist for social justice, for peace, for ecology. She has always used art to change the world,” Newgarden said.