Portrait of Laurie Anderson; installation view from Laurie Anderson: The Weather at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2021. Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Ron Blunt.
LAURIE ANDERSON TALKS ABOUT THE WEATHER The multimedia artist speaks of John Cage, telling the national story, and abstract things. INTERVIEW BY CHRIS BYRNE
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pending the summer at the Elaine de Kooning House and Studio in East Hampton, artist-in-residence Laurie Anderson is always looking forward. This month the Hirshhorn Museum will close Anderson’s largest US career retrospective, The Weather, which included a series of live performances, but the groundbreaking multimedia artist never remains idle. Here, Chris Byrne shares a recent interview with Patron.
Chris Byrne (CB): Is it true that you initially declined the Hirshhorn Museum’s proposed survey of your work? Was this due to your schedule? Laurie Anderson (LA): Yes, I didn’t want to spend time looking back. I have a lot of new projects that are taking up most of my energy these days. CB: There’s no aversion to being institutionalized in a national museum? LA: I have nothing against institutions. I work with them often in many different ways. It was just a question of how to spend my time,
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Laurie Anderson, Four Talks, installation view from Laurie Anderson: The Weather at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2021. Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Ron Blunt.