LAURIE ANDERSON

Early Years

Laura Phillips “Laurie” Anderson was born in Chicago in 1947, one of eight children. She has said that she “didn’t love” her mother, but that she did admire her—her mother taught her to love books, and not to care about what other people think. As a teenager, Anderson spent her weekends studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago or playing violin (she was a member of the Chicago Youth Symphony). She initially studied biology at Mills College in Oakland, California, but dropped out and moved to New York in 1966. She gained her BA in art history from Barnard College in 1969 and also wrote for Artforum. She received her MFA in sculpture from Columbia University in 1972, having worked a lot with newspaper,—for example, pulping copies of The New York Times and shaping hem into bricks. Her first performance art piece, Automotive, took place in 1972 in Vermont and was a symphony played on car horns.

Laurie Anderson: Artworks

Laurie Anderson is an interdisciplinary artist, expressing herself through a huge range of different mediums. Sometimes autobiographical, her works encourage viewers to consider sociopolitical issues. She creates immersive works using lighting, projection and soundscapes, and also has a musical career, touring the world with her compositions and performances .

• During the 1970s, Anderson created the “tape bow violin” or “self-playing violin”, where she installed a loudspeaker in a violin that would play prerecorded violin music while she also played the instrument, creating a duet. In 1975, Anderson took the violin to Genoa and busked on the streets, playing the instrument while standing on ice skates embedded into two blocks of ice, which would melt as she performed—Duets on Ice. At this point, she became friends with Marina Abramović, who remembered those times by saying: “The art was no commodity. You were doing it because you believed in it.”
• Described as her “magnum opus”, United States I–IV (1983) was a performance art piece split into 78 segments and performed over two nights. The piece combined music with film, animation, text, photography and drawings, and acted as a lens through which to view the influence technology has on life in post-industrial North America.
• In 2015, Laurie Anderson staged Habeas Corpus in New York City, the culmination of years of work into the idea of telepresence, connecting galleries with inmates in correctional facilities— “how to be there and not there at the same time”. Habeas Corpus featured former Guantánamo detainee Mohammed el Gharani: a live image of him from a studio in West Africa was wrapped on to a large-scale three-dimensional cast of his body. Anderson encouraged viewers to consider ideas of identity, surveillance, time and freedom. The work also included an immersive soundscape originally designed by Lou Reed.

Laurie Anderson: Select Awards

• Guggenheim Fellowship (1982)
• Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2007)
• Lina Mangiacapre Award, Venice Film Festival (2015)
• Grammy, Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance (2019)
• Kyoto Prize (2026)

Laurie Anderson: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• All in Your Head, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2026)
• ARK: United States V, Aviva Studios, Manchester (2024)
• Looking into a Mirror Sideways, Moderna Museet, Stockholm(2023)
• The Weather, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2021)
• Habeas Corpus, Park Avenue Armory, New York City (2015)
• Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999–2000) (touring)
• Stories from the Nerve Bible (later, _The Nerve Bible) (1992–1995) (touring)
• United States I–IV, Brooklyn Academy of Music (1983)
• Laurie Anderson, Holly Solomon Gallery, New York City (1977)

Select Group Exhibitions

• In the Presence of Others: Marina Abramović, Laurie Anderson and Miranda July, Nørrebro Theatre (2026)
• In Minor Keys, Arsenale, Venice Biennale (2026)
• A Selection of Works from the 1980s, Vito Schnabel Gallery, St Moritz (2016)
• The World Over—Under Capricorn, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1996)

Further Reading

• Laurie Anderson’s official website
• Laurie Anderson’s Instagram
• 2024 Q&A from the Guardian
• 2021/2023 interview in The New York Times

Laurie Anderson FAQs

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